Though I Walk Through the Valley
by Kouri Arashi
Summary: This is basically a casefic souls are turning up early and with no memories. Tsuzuki and Hisoka are sent to investigate and naturally get in heaps of trouble. PostKyoto ficness. UPDATED YES OMG AFTER TWO YEARS!
1. Prologue

_Notes: See Kouri. See Kouri play a little game called "how many fandoms can she write for at one time?" See Kouri's chapters coming out slowly. _

....had I mentioned that lately I seem to have totally lost my mind? 

Warnings: Let's see... angst, yaoi, blood, Hisoka-torture, angst, Tsuzuki-torture, Muraki being a smug bastard, cliffhangers, Tsuzuki/Hisoka, angst, spoilers for all the Yami series and parts of the manga, Hisoka-torture, fluff, sap, Tatsumi/Tsuzuki, sorry no Akimiya anymore, maybe a bit of Watari/Tatsumi if I get bored, angst, non-consensual sex, Muraki/anybody who comes near him, violence, Hisoka-torture, and angst. (So in other words, all the stuff you sick and wonderful people loved about my other Yami fics.) 

Rated: R, unless my muses get out of hand. 

Disclaimer: Hoo boy... if Yami no Matsuei actually belonged to me, you'd probably never see me online, because I'd be too busy watching Hisoka and Tsuzuki make out. 

PS: This is *not*, in any way, related to the trilogy with Live Through in the others. New universe. Starting over. 

Though I Walk Through the Valley 

Prologue 

    It was really amazing, Tatsumi reflected over his lunch, the way that nothing could change. The way that the world could be torn apart and then sewn back together, and you could hardly even see the stitches. The way that Hisoka could still remain sarcastic and aloof in spite of what had happened, the same way that Tsuzuki could still appear to be cheerful and scatter-brained. 

    Even more amazing than that was the way that no one challenged either of them to stop pretending. Afraid that the stitches would rip, Tatsumi supposed. No one knew what had happened once Hisoka had gone into that burning building. 

    No one, that was, except him. 

    He had teleported in through the shadows and managed to get them out. He would never tell anyone, let alone the two of them, but he had heard the tale end of their conversation. Enough, at least, to be certain of how much they loved each other. 

    Which was probably why it was driving him absolutely crazy that they were sitting at lunch like nothing had happened. Tsuzuki had only just gotten out of the hospital a few days previous and was still mowing down everything that got in his way that might even be considered sweet. And Hisoka just watched, in that same scornful way as always. 

    Tatsumi wanted to bang their heads together. 

    "Oi, long-face." Watari plopped into the chair next to him. "You're looking chipper." 

    Tatsumi declined to mention that "chipper" was not a word that could be applied to him. Ever. And declined to mention that 003 was trying to burrow down Watari's shirt. The scientist had to have noticed . . . didn't he? "Hello to you too," Tatsumi said, trying not to sound amused. He couldn't equal Hisoka in aloofness, but he could match him step for step in stoicism. 

    "What's up?" Watari took out his lunch, a little box of sushi. "Want some sushi?" he offered as an afterthought. 

    "I'm fine, thanks." Tatsumi had long since eaten his own lunch and given way to staring at the wall in thought. He might have stared at Tsuzuki in thought, but he didn't want the other Shinigami to notice. He also didn't want Hisoka to notice; as determined as he seemed to be to not be in love with Tsuzuki, he didn't show any qualms about being protective. 

    "So why the doom and gloom?" Watari asked, feeding a bit of sushi to 003 before beginning to eat. 

    "No reason, really," Tatsumi said, sneaking a surreptitious glance at where Tsuzuki was trying to get Hisoka to eat a cookie, and failing miserably. 

    Watari followed his surreptitious glance not-so-surreptitiously. "Whatcha moping for? They look back to normal. Doesn't that mean everything's okay?" His voice had a distinct tone of 'everything had better be okay, or I'll be annoyed.' 

    Tatsumi gave him a glance. He knew better than anyone that Watari was a lot less feckless than he seemed, but sometimes the depths of his perception were downright irritating. "I suppose it was silly of me to think that anything might change. Those two will never change." 

    "Oh, they've changed." Watari shrugged, spearing a bit of sushi and waving it in Tatsumi's face. This earned him a glare which he returned with a delighted grin. "They just don't want to admit it to anyone, particularly not themselves." 

    "I suppose not," Tatsumi said, trying to sound noncommittal. 

    "If they change," Watari said, his voice a bit wistful, "then they have to admit that it all happened. Which is something I think they might not be able to do for a long time." 

    "I wish it had never happened," Tatsumi said, surprising himself with his sudden vehemence. 

    Watari shrugged. "You know the phrase. What doesn't kill us, makes us stronger." 

    "A bit ironic, given that we're all already dead," Tatsumi observed. 

    Watari gave him a bit of an annoyed look. "You know what I mean. They'll get over it. Hm, no, that's not quite the phrase I want. They'll get past it." 

    Tatsumi studied them as Hisoka gave up on getting Tsuzuki to do any work and left the lunchroom in a huff. Tsuzuki sat with cookie outstretched, looking forlorn, his cheerful mask slipping for a few seconds while he thought no one watched. "Do you think they love each other?" he asked, trying to keep his voice dispassionate. 

    "Yes," Watari said immediately. "But whether or not they're 'in love' . . . that's something I wouldn't venture a guess on." He shrugged and picked up another piece of sushi. "They'll figure it out. And probably drive us all crazy in the process. Sure you don't want any of this?" 

    "I'm sure," Tatsumi said, and stood. "I need to get back to work." 

    "Why the sudden concern?" Watari asked, as they both watched Tsuzuki pack up his lunch. "And why weren't you eating with them?" 

    "I was, until Tsuzuki practically shoved one of those cookies down my throat," Tatsumi said dryly. "As for my concern, they're going to be getting another assignment at today's staff meeting. I suppose I'm just worried about how they'll handle it." 

    Watari nodded, frowning. "Does it have anything to do with good old one-eyed and evil?" 

    Tatsumi couldn't help but snort at that description. "Certainly not that I'm aware of, or I'd be taking care of it myself." 

    Watari chuckled. "I'll just bet you would. You really want his head on a pike, don't you." 

    "Don't you?" Tatsumi countered. 

    "I'd say silver platter," Watari replied. 

~~~~ 

    "This," Tsuzuki said, in a heartfelt tone that was usually reserved for chocolate or attempting to get Hisoka to act like he was warm-blooded rather than cold, "is the strangest assignment I've ever gotten." 

    Hisoka flicked an annoyed glance at him, but was inclined to agree. He flipped through the paperwork that Tatsumi had given them. A series of souls, all coming to the Meifu before their appointed time, and the strangest thing about it was a consistent lack of memory. Each and every one of the souls had amnesia. Total amnesia was rare even among the living, and impossible among the dead -- it was caused by a brain condition, and when freed of the body, the soul remembered. 

    They had all lived in the same area, which was a blessing in of itself. The worst cases were the ones where they didn't even have a place to start. And, something for which Hisoka was doubly grateful for, this wasn't in Kyoto. Not that he had any serious expectation that Muraki had gone back there, but it was somewhere they knew he could be, and in Hisoka's mind, that was bad enough. 

    Their destination was Aomori, in the north, which made Hisoka very grateful that it wasn't winter. Snow was one of the few things that he didn't miss about living in the real world. The perpetual yet gentle warmth of the Meifu was very good at staving off depression. 

    Though it wasn't doing a very good job at the moment. Hisoka studied the pile of papers with a sigh and attempted not to either stare at Tsuzuki or yell at him for not doing any work. If it had been winter, he might have tried to put the job off, on the principle that it could wait. It wasn't in their region, anyway. They had only gotten the job while the pair who normally covered that sector were on vacation, anyway. 

    "All these victims died in the same way," he said, partially to himself, but also for Tsuzuki's benefit. It wasn't as if he was going to read the files, anyway; he almost always relied on Hisoka to tell him the important bits. Hisoka would have complained, but wading through the paperwork was tedious and it wasn't as if Tsuzuki didn't do his fair share of the work in other departments. Such as the kick-the-bad-guy's-ass department, which Hisoka did not fare so well in. "Slow, some sort of wasting disease. That's all we've got, though. Guess we'll have to talk to the families if we want to know more." That promised to be fun. 

    "Mm hmm," Tsuzuki said, not sounding as if he were paying a particularly large amount of attention. 

    "Do you want to go now?" Hisoka asked. 

    "Of course!" Tsuzuki bounced out of his chair. "We can't let anyone else diiiiiieeee~!!" 

    Hisoka sighed and stood. "There's been no pacing in the deaths; the timing seems random. If this is a person or a demon, they don't have any pattern that I can see. We'll have to find out if anything related all the victims together." 

    "Of course!" Tsuzuki said. "Ne, Hisoka, do you think we'll be able to go to the festival?" 

    "Which festival?" Hisoka asked distractedly, frowning at him. 

    "Nebuta!" Tsuzuki declared happily. "I wanna see the parade!" 

    Hisoka frowned. "Isn't it too late for that?" 

    "Nope," Tsuzuki said. "It's at the beginning of August, which is right now!" 

    "Tsuzuki, we've got more important work to do than going to festivals," Hisoka remarked, trying not to sound irritable. 

    "But . . . I wanna see Hisoka in a kimono again!" Tsuzuki replied. 

    Hisoka immediately turned red right up to the tips of his ears. "Wh-what? Idiot." He folded his arms over his chest and started to stalk away in a huff. He'd been very good at that lately. He tried to remember when Tsuzuki had even ever seen him in a kimono. 

    Tsuzuki gathered up the paperwork and followed him in what would appear to the untrained eye to be blissful ignorance of his partner's irritation. "Can we please?" 

    "If we're not too busy," Hisoka snapped. "But I'm not wearing a kimono." 

    Tsuzuki smiled. "Sankyuu, Hisoka!" 

    "Stupid idiot," Hisoka muttered under his breath. "Let's get going. Has Tatsumi-san said anything about the hotel arrangements?" 

    "He's reserved us a room," Tsuzuki said. 

    "Just one?" Hisoka asked. 

    Tsuzuki gave him a hurt look. "Yes," he finally said. "Just one." 

    Hisoka continued to trudge down the hallway, now feeling like a royal ass for hurting Tsuzuki's feelings. He wasn't going to apologize. He hated apologizing. He was not going to -- "Sorry," he mumbled. 

    Tsuzuki blinked at him. "Ehh?" 

    "I'm sorry, okay?" Hisoka snapped, blushing again. "That was mean." 

    Tsuzuki smiled again, but this time it was more genuine. "It's okay, Hisoka. I understand." 

    Hisoka followed him down the hallway, wondering just what it was that Tsuzuki thought he understood. 

~~~~ 


	2. Chapter One

_Um, yeah. Warnings for... sap. At least a little. And... nothing else. No cliffhangers yet! And I dunno about my characterization of Watari and Tatsumi... I tried to imitate the bits of the manga they're in, but ::shrugs:: Thingy._

Chapter One 

    "The countryside is so pretty up here," Tsuzuki mused. He had pulled a chair up to the window of their hotel room and was staring outside dreamily. "I wish we worked in this region all the time." 

    "No you don't," Hisoka said impatiently. "As soon as winter came you'd be whining about how cold you were." 

    Tsuzuki pouted. "I don't whine . . ." 

    Hisoka made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. He had sorted out the paperwork from the eight deaths chronologically, and was working on finding their addresses. There was a map sitting on the bed with the three he'd found marked in red. 

    Their method was familiar in this sort of case. People tended not to trust a sixteen year old detective, so Tsuzuki asked the questions while Hisoka remained invisible and poked around the house for anything of interest. Hisoka had already informed him he would have to pretend to be someone from the hospital or health department; people didn't send detectives to investigate illnesses. 

    Tsuzuki let out a little sigh and continued to look out the window. Hisoka glanced up at him, then down just as quickly. His one goal lately was not to let Tsuzuki know how he felt about anything. 

    While he had still been in the infirmary, Tsuzuki had been different, vulnerable. But getting out, getting back to work, had been like someone had flipped a switch. He was back to the old Tsuzuki, just like that. Hisoka would have rather died than admitted it, but he had been hurt by Tsuzuki's behavior. 

    Tsuzuki didn't trust him, it was as simple as that. If he did, he would let Hisoka see how he was hurting. But he hid it from his partner like he hid it from everyone. 

    Hisoka jabbed at the map with red marker, scowling. Despite Tsuzuki asking if they could stay together, despite everything they had gone through in Kyoto and in the hospital afterwards, Tsuzuki still didn't trust him. It gave him a strange pang in his heart, and as Hisoka usually was when confronted with that sort of emotion, he was angry. Angry at Tsuzuki for refusing to change. Angry at himself for caring. 

    "Two of these men lived alone," he informed Tsuzuki. "So we won't have anyone to question. There's no information about a girlfriend or anything." 

    "All right," Tsuzuki said, still looking out the window. Hisoka wanted to know what he was thinking, but didn't look. Tsuzuki was alternately terrible at hiding his emotions or fanatic about it. This was one of the latter times. 

    Hisoka could have gotten past Tsuzuki's shields if he had wanted to, but he didn't. He was so careful about guarding his own privacy that he didn't want to invade Tsuzuki's without good reason. And wanting to know how Tsuzuki felt about him was not, in his opinion, a good enough reason. 

    So Hisoka did his best to ignore Tsuzuki's briefer-than-usual sentences, tried not to notice that Tsuzuki never looked directly at him. Refused point blank to wonder why it hurt. 

    He simply stood up. "Let's go." 

~~~~ 

    Tsuzuki and Hisoka walked to the first house in silence. It seemed awkward, even to the normally uncommunicative empath. Though he wasn't talkative even at the best of times, he thought he had gotten to the point where he could have conversations with Tsuzuki. But apparently those times were over. 

    _I never should have told him,_ he thought miserably._ I ruined everything when I admitted that I needed him. _

    "Here we are," Tsuzuki said. 

    Hisoka jumped, startled out of his reverie. When around the others, Tsuzuki was hyper-genki, but when it was just the two of them, he didn't talk anywhere near as much as he used to. He hid his emotions well, but only Tatsumi had enough Reikan ability to totally block Hisoka out. 

    On the rare occasions when they touched, the contact was enough for Hisoka to sense Tsuzuki's emotions. He could feel the fear that Tsuzuki still felt, the lingering pain and misery. He did his best to avoid ever touching Tsuzuki, but even in his current frame of mind, the older Shinigami was still very touchy-feely. 

    "Oh, yeah," he said. "Okay." He faded out of vision, letting Tsuzuki take over. 

    Tsuzuki went up and rang the doorbell. It was a minute before a blond woman answered. Tsuzuki took a few seconds to recall the basic facts of the case before speaking. "Ohayo, Imazaki-san. I'm from the public health department. Do you have a few minutes?" 

    "Oh . . . of course," she said, and stood back to let him in. 

    "I'm sorry to trouble you with this," Tsuzuki said. "But we think that your husband may have died of a rare virus, and we're investigating." 

    Hisoka wandered around the house, looking for anything that may have been a clue, giving half an ear to the conversation. Tsuzuki was getting a detailed description of the progression of the man's illness. Hisoka, who still recalled his time in the hospital vividly, found it rather uncomfortable. 

    Every house was the same way, and everyone gave the same story. Tsuzuki and Hisoka spent lunch adding all the facts together. 

    "So, let me get this straight," Hisoka said, watching Tsuzuki plow his way through a plate of chicken lo mein. "The memory loss took place before death." 

    Tsuzuki nodded. "Every time." 

    "Theoretically, amnesiacs have died before," Hisoka said, picking at his lunch. "What happens then?" 

    "They're supposed to regain their memory when they die," Tsuzuki said. "You know, 'cause they're not dependent on their brains anymore. Or something. That's what Watari said when I asked him, anyway." 

    Hisoka tapped his chopsticks against the side of his plate absently. 

    "But you know what else is really weird?" Tsuzuki asked through a mouthful of noodles. Hisoka fixed a glare on him and he chewed and swallowed before speaking again. "They all said that the people stopped acting like themselves before they died. That they didn't have any personality at all, really." 

    Hisoka frowned. "First they lose their memories . . . then their personalities . . . and finally their lives." 

    "But there was no reason for any of them to have died," Tsuzuki pointed out. "They didn't have any recognizable disease. It was like something was just draining away their life force." 

    "Great," Hisoka said. "So now we've got a malicious . . . whatsit . . . to think about." 

    "We don't know that it's malicious," Tsuzuki pointed out. 

    Hisoka shrugged. "In my opinion, anything that kills people is malicious. Maybe that's just my own personal bias, though." 

    Tsuzuki looked chagrined. "You knew what I meant," he muttered. 

    "And there's no obvious link between any of them," Hisoka mused, ignoring Tsuzuki. "Nothing work related, family related . . ." 

    Tsuzuki just sighed, finishing up his lunch. "We should ask Watari and the Gushoshin if there's been any sort of precedent for this kind of thing," he suggested. 

    "Not a bad idea," Hisoka said. 

    "And until we hear back from them . . ." Tsuzuki looked at him with big eyes. "Festival? Pleeeeease? The parade of the lanterns is tonight and I've always always always wanted to see it, and -- " 

    "We can go." 

    "And I've never had a chance to come before because I've always been on duty and this isn't normally my district and -- " 

    "Tsuzuki. I said we can go." 

    "And the lanterns are in the shape of samurai and -- oh." Tsuzuki blinked at him, startled. "We can go? Really?" 

    Hisoka's lips twitched. "Yeah, we can go. We don't have anything to do until the Gushoshin get back to us." 

    "You smiled!" Tsuzuki's face split into a mile-wide grin. "You just smiled!" 

    "I did not!" Hisoka quickly reshaped his features into his usual scowl. "Idiot. Let's go, we have work to do." 

    "You just said that we didn't have anything to do until -- " 

    "Let's go see the Gushoshin." 

    "Aw, Hisooookaaaa . . ." 

~~~~ 

    Hisoka had to admit that the parade of lanterns was impressive. Tsuzuki was blissful, and Hisoka enjoyed that as well. It seemed like a long time since he had seen Tsuzuki so unguardedly happy. 

    "Hisoka! I'll win you a prize!" Tsuzuki bounded for the booths as soon as the parade was over. 

    "I don't recall that going well last time you tried it," Hisoka said, recalling when Tsuzuki had attempted to win a prize for the girls in Kyoto. 

    Tsuzuki's face fell, but he rebounded quickly. "Maybe you should win me a prize!" 

    Hisoka immediately turned pink. "Why would I do that?" he asked. 

    "Because I asked you to?" Tsuzuki said, giving Hisoka his best puppy dog eyes. "Pleeeeeeeease?" 

    "What if I want to win a prize for myself?" Hisoka asked. 

    "You can win two! I'll give you the money!" 

    "We'll see," Hisoka said, though he already knew he was going to. As promised, five minutes later, Tsuzuki was snuggling a large stuffed bear. Hisoka watched in amusement, and tried to ignore the ache in his heart. 

    "You should win one for yourself," Tsuzuki said. "Everyone needs something to cuddle." 

    "Hn," Hisoka said, and walked away from the booth. He privately thought that maybe Tsuzuki was right, and that maybe he could use a stuffed animal. But he certainly wasn't going to admit it in front of Tsuzuki. Of course, what he really would have liked to be cuddling was Tsuzuki himself, but he certainly wasn't going to say that to anyone. Ever. 

    "Hisoka, wait for meeeeee," Tsuzuki said, jogging to catch up to him. 

    Hisoka continued to stalk through the festival, his hands buried in his pockets. He had perfected sulking a long time ago, before even becoming a Shinigami. He had it down so well that he thought he ought to have a patent. 

    "Hisokaaaaaa . . . you're ignoring me." Tsuzuki caught him by the arm, but Hisoka pulled away quickly. 

    "Look, just leave me alone," he said. 

    Tsuzuki blinked. "Is your empathy bothering you?" he asked, picking up on the fact that Hisoka hadn't wanted to be touched. "Ah, gomen! I didn't think that being in a crowd would bother you! I completely forgot! Here, sit down for a minute . . ." 

    Before Hisoka could protest or correct him, Tsuzuki had ushered him over to a bench and made him sit down. 

    "I'll go get you a drink," Tsuzuki said, and scampered away. 

    Hisoka sighed and pushed a hand through his hair. He didn't want to contradict Tsuzuki; his empathy had been giving him trouble. He didn't like crowds, and while Tatsumi had been able to teach him about shielding, it didn't always work among large groups of people. 

    "Here!" Tsuzuki offered Hisoka a cup of tea. 

    Hisoka accepted it and sipped. Tsuzuki's concern was seeping through his shields, but he didn't mind. It was a pleasant change from the Shinigami's usual fear and doubt, and helped him shield from the other people there. 

    "Feeling better?" Tsuzuki asked, his face looming only inches from Hisoka's. 

    "Aa . . ." Hisoka said, wondering absently what Tsuzuki would do if he just leaned up the few necessary inches and kissed him. 

    "Great! I'm gonna go get some snacks!" 

    "Tsuzuki! We don't have the money for -- " Hisoka sighed, seeing that Tsuzuki had already disappeared into the crowd. "Idiot," he muttered underneath his breath. "Stupid, stupid idiot." Without Tsuzuki's reassuring presence there, all the others pushed in at his frail shields. 

    _/can't believe she actually wanted to come to this stupid festival again/ _

    /this is so romantic, I wonder if he'll actually propose tonight/ 

    /couldn't we at least have gone to dinner first? I'm starving and all the food here is so expensive/ 

    Hisoka took a deep breath and sipped at the tea. And Tsuzuki wondered why he preferred to be alone all the time, really. Could he be any more dense? 

    ". . . wish you'd worn a kimono." 

    Hisoka jumped. "Ts-Tsuzuki?" 

    Tsuzuki blinked at him. "Aa. You okay?" 

    "I'm fine," Hisoka snapped, not wanting to admit that his empathy had been bothering him. He had to learn to take care of himself. He had always known that. Becoming a Shinigami had at least taught him that he wasn't a monster, but it didn't stop him from feeling like a freak. And if he couldn't control it, that only made him feel worse. 

    Tsuzuki, for the moment, seemed content to just sit and stare up into the sky. His eyes had gotten that fuzzy, unfocused look that they got whenever he was deep in thought. 

    "What're you thinking about?" Hisoka asked. 

    "Just that's it's nice . . . to sit for a while, and not think about much of anything," Tsuzuki said. 

    Hisoka wondered for the thousandth time what had happened in Kyoto, during that brief time that Muraki had been alone with Tsuzuki. He could remember their conversations about whether or not Tsuzuki was 'human'; those had been brought on by Muraki too. Hisoka wasn't one for prying into someone's life, but he would have given a lot to understand his partner. 

    "I wouldn't know," Hisoka finally said. 

    Tsuzuki grinned. "You need to try not thinking sometimes." 

    Hisoka snorted. "Well, you're certainly good enough at it." 

    "Mou, Hisoka, you're so mean to me . . ." 

~~~~ 

    "You're working late tonight," Tatsumi said, peering into Watari's office. "Everyone else has gone home." 

    "Really?" Watari asked absently. "I hadn't noticed." 

    "What are you working on?" Tatsumi asked. 

    Watari looked up and grinned suddenly. "Why the sudden curiosity? Usually you're running away from my office." 

    Tatsumi arched an eyebrow at him. "The nights that you stay late, there's usually some sort of potion in the coffee the next morning. I just want to know what I should be avoiding." 

    "Harsh," Watari said. "Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm just going through old case files for Tsuzuki and Bon. They gave me the details of the case and want to know if there's been anything like it before." 

    "Ah, so you're doing actual work," Tatsumi said dryly. "I should call someone down to witness this, or else nobody will believe me in the morning." 

    Watari ignored him, typing determinedly away on his computer. 

    "I thought they asked the Gushoshin," Tatsumi finally said. 

    "They did," Watari said, tucking a loose strand of hair behind his ears. "I've got all the cases on the computer, though, so I'm checking the old files. The Gushoshin are looking through the books." He grinned up at Tatsumi. "So you did know what I was doing." 

    Tatsumi coughed. "I suspected." 

    "Aw, that's so cute, you're worried about Tsuzuki . . ." 

    Tatsumi turned a graitfying shade of pink, but only for a few seconds. "You say that as if you aren't." 

    Watari shrugged. "It was early for them to be put on a case, and you know it. I'm not sure Tsuzuki was ready . . . I would have taken the case if you'd asked, you know." 

    "I would have taken it myself," Tatsumi said. "But Tsuzuki insisted that he wanted to be back on duty as soon as possible. If he wants to distract himself, I'm not going to say anything. Besides, some time alone with Kurosaki-kun might be good for both of them." 

    Watari stopped typing and picked up a pen, twirling it between his fingers. "I wonder what happened between them when Bon went into the lab for him . . . whatever it was changed both of them." 

    "I'm sure we'll never know," Tatsumi said, with considerable reserve. 

    "You know," Watari said, looking at Tatsumi with a rather amused expression, "you're a really good liar. I bet everyone here is convinced by you. But not me. What did you see when you went in to get them?" 

    Tatsumi took off his glasses and started to polish them. "It's really not your business, Watari." 

    "Wasn't yours, either," Watari said with a large grin. 

    "I didn't hear them on purpose." 

    "So you did hear them!" 

    "I -- " Tatsumi gave Watari his best glare. Normally, even the bravest would shrink away. Watari just grinned and started to suck on the pen he'd been playing with. "Watari," Tatsumi said coldly. "I'm not going to discuss this with you." He turned to go back to his office. 

    "All right," Watari said, turning back to his computer. He glanced up. "Ne, Tatsumi . . . they're going to be okay." 

    Tatsumi looked back, and gave Watari one of his rare smiles. "Aa," he said. "You're probably right." 

~~~~ 

    Tsuzuki woke as Hisoka nudged him sharply in the side. He blinked sleepily up at his partner. "Five more minutes . . ." he finally managed to mumble, rolling back over and burying his head in his pillow. 

    Hisoka gave an exasperated sigh. "You always say that and then you never get up anyway. We told Watari and the Gushoshin that we'd be back to check with them in the morning, didn't we? It's morning. Now get up." 

    "But I didn't sleep well at all," Tsuzuki said, pulling the covers over his head. 

    "You had too much sake and sugar. Up." 

    "Mou, Hisoka . . ." 

    "Come on, Tsuzuki. I've been up for an hour now. I let you sleep that much longer than me. Stop putting it off. Another five minutes won't make you feel any better." 

    Tsuzuki groaned and sat up. For a minute he just sat there with the blankets pooled in his lap, looking blankly at the far well. Then he rubbed his eyes and pushed his sleep-mussed hair out of his face. "I dreamed about the fire again." 

    Hisoka stopped in his tracks. He gave Tsuzuki a long look before turning away. "Aa," was all he managed to say. Then, after a pause, "I still dream about it too." 

    Tsuzuki got out of bed, dressed in the same T-shirt and loose flannel pants he always wore to bed. Or at least that he always wore when they were together on missions. Hisoka looked away, hoping that Tsuzuki wouldn't notice his blush. He tried to tell himself that it was perfectly normal to wonder what Tsuzuki wore to bed when he wasn't around, but his conscience wasn't buying it. 

    If there was one thing he couldn't stand about their current situation, more than anything else, it was the uncertainty. He had grown to the point that he was at ease around his partner, even during Tsuzuki's serious moments. He hated not knowing what to say, how to act, how to comfort him. He hated wondering. 

    Tsuzuki walked into the bathroom, after gathering his clothes, without another word. Hisoka waited in silence. It was only a few minutes before Tsuzuki came back out, fully dressed (though his tie was only half-done, as usual) and looking at least mostly alert. 

    "It's so strange," he said thoughtfully, combing his hair out of his eyes with his fingers. "So much of it is blurry . . . when it was happening, it was like I wasn't even there. But it's perfectly clear when I dream it." 

    Hisoka sat on the edge of the bed, not knowing what to say and hating it. It was the first time since they had left the hospital that Tsuzuki had referred to the events in Kyoto at all, even indirectly. 

    "And then when I wake up, it's all a blur again," Tsuzuki said softly, his eyes unfocused and staring at something unknown. Something inside himself. "I barely even remember what Muraki did to me. I know it, intellectually, but I don't -- " 

    "Stop . . ." 

    Tsuzuki's eyes snapped back into focus and he stared at his partner. Hisoka was still sitting, but his head was cradled in his hands. 

    "When you talk about, I . . ." Hisoka drew in a gasping breath. "It hurts you so much . . . if it hurts so much, please don't talk about it . . ." 

    Tsuzuki leaned against the wall and slowly slid down until he was sitting. He sat silently with his hands folded in his lap, waiting for Hisoka to pull himself together. If it had been anyone else in such distress, he would have made some attempt to comfort them -- but not Hisoka, for whom touch usually meant more pain. "Sorry," he offered, when Hisoka seemed to be in control of himself again. "I didn't mean to upset you." 

    Hisoka shook his head. "I'm all right . . ." 

    "Sometimes in my dreams, you don't come for me," Tsuzuki said softly, and winced as Hisoka shuddered. "And I burn and burn and burn . . ." 

    "Wouldn't you have been happier that way?" Hisoka asked suddenly, looking up at Tsuzuki. "Don't you ever hate me for saving you?" 

    Tsuzuki stared at him, surprised. Then he smiled a little. "Tatsumi apologized for saving me . . . but I never thought I'd hear you doing the same. But it's all right. It would have been selfish to abandon you. I've just . . . I've never been needed before . . ." 

    Hisoka looked down at the floor, and in a moment of brutal self-honesty, stated, "Sometimes I hate myself for needing you. But that doesn't make it not happen." 

    "Why?" Tsuzuki asked curiously. 

    Hisoka shrugged, his thin shoulders hunching forward, inward. "Because all my life, I had to take care of myself. It's strange . . . even for a few seconds, to want someone else to take care of me. It makes me think less of myself." 

    "Oh," Tsuzuki said, and looked at the floor. 

    "In my dreams," Hisoka said softly, "you won't come with me. And we both burn." 

    They sat in silence, neither of them knowing what to say. 

    "You asked if you could stay with me," Hisoka whispered. "But I don't know what that means." 

    "I don't either," Tsuzuki admitted softly. "Just . . . that I don't want you to stop caring about me. I don't want you to stop needing me . . . even when I think I don't deserve it, I can't stand the thought of you not needing me . . ." 

    Hisoka's hands clenched nervously in the bottom of his shirt. "So . . . what now?" He laughed shakily. "I feel like something important just happened, and I missed it." 

    Tsuzuki gave him a lopsided smile. "Don't worry. I think I missed it too." 

    "Then let's go see Watari." Hisoka stood up. "We have a case to solve." He extended his hand to Tsuzuki to help him up. Tsuzuki accepted, and didn't let go even after he was on his feet. 

~~~~ 


	3. Chapter Two

_Well, here it is. Finally. I know this chapter is shorter than mine usually are, but if I didn't manage to post *something*, I was set to give up on the whole damn fic._

Chapter Two 

    Watari had fallen asleep, sprawled out on his desk, with 003 nestled into the mess of his hair that was strewn everywhere. She hooted welcomingly when Tsuzuki and Hisoka walked in, and then nipped at Watari's ear. He sat bolt upright. "Ohayo!" he said enthusiastically, immediately one hundred percent awake. 

    "Ohayo," Tsuzuki greeted cheerfully, and plunked into a chair. "We just saw the Gushoshin. They don't have anything yet, but they're still looking. Did you find anything?" 

    "Aa . . . I actually did, right around dawn." Watari yawned and stretched. "The files are still pulled up on my computer. Feel free to look while I get myself some coffee." He wandered out of the lab without another word. 

    Hisoka shook his head, and seated himself at the computer. "This is odd," he said, his eyes rapidly scanning the screen. 

    "What is?" Tsuzuki asked, leaning over his shoulder. 

    "This could be the same case that we're working on right now," Hisoka said, frowning. "It's the exact same set of circumstances. Loss of memory, loss of personality, and eventual death." 

    "Just one person?" Tsuzuki asked. 

    "No . . . a string of them, same as this time." Hisoka pushed back from the computer. "What do you think it means?" 

    Tsuzuki looked blank. "When was it?" 

    "Fifteen years ago." 

    Tsuzuki looked thoughtful at this. "Who do you think went back and entered all the centuries-old casefiles into the computer?" he wondered aloud. "That job must have taken years . . . the JuohCho is as old as the human race, though somewhat less organized in the beginning." He caught Hisoka's scowl and shook himself. "Ah, never mind." 

    Watari bustled back in, carrying a styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand. "So!" he said, snatching up his hair tie from where it was lying on the desk and yanking his hair back into its usual ponytail. "Isn't that interesting?" 

    "Enlighten us," Hisoka said dryly. "Any idea what it means?" 

    "No clue," Watari said. He plunked into his chair, drinking his coffee at a rapid pace. "But what you might find interesting is that it's not the only one. There's an identical case every fifteen years, back until about the turn of the century. After that, the records are too fragmented to search." 

    "Every fifteen years?" Hisoka asked, startled. 

    "Like clockwork," Watari said with a nod. "Always the exact same thing. And there's always been a Shinigami pair dispatched to look into it, but no one has ever figured out the cause of the deaths." 

    Tsuzuki was frowning, pinching his lower lip in thought. "Every fifteen years," he said thoughtfully. Then he brightened. "So we ought to know how long we have, if they're all identical!" 

    Watari nodded. "In every case, there are thirteen deaths. They each take place about four days apart, evenly spaced. So the whole thing, whatever it is, doesn't last any longer than two months." 

    "How many victims have there been so far?" Tsuzuki asked. 

    Hisoka gave him an annoyed look and muttered something about a certain someone not paying enough attention to the details of the case. "Seven," was all he said out loud. 

    "Eight," a voice corrected. The three Shinigami looked up to see Tatsumi standing in the doorway to the lab. He walked over and handed Hisoka a sheet of paper. "There was another this morning." 

    Hisoka swore creatively, under his breath. 

    "So only five left," Tsuzuki said. "That's twenty days. That's not even three weeks!" 

    Tatsumi seated himself in a chair and gave Watari's dishevelled state a look that bordered between amusement and annoyance. "Were you here all night?" he asked. 

    Watari pushed a hand through his hair, loosening several strands of it from his ponytail and letting them drift down around his face. "Aa . . . I kept meaning to go home, but then I kept finding more stuff." He shrugged a little. 

    "What could cause a pattern like this?" Tsuzuki asked, seeing that Hisoka was absorbed in studying the file on the new death. "A demon? A cursed artifact of some sort, maybe?" 

    "If I had to venture a guess," Watari said, "I'd say it was some sort of living thing. And that every fifteen years, it needs to . . . rejuvenate itself, for lack of a better term. Like this is some sort of meal for it. But it's not a demon. I mean, that's the first thing the Gushoshin would have checked -- if it was one of the Makai, they would have found it." 

    "Well, at least we know it isn't Muraki," Hisoka remarked absently, his eyes glued to the file. "Since he isn't that old." He glanced up, suddenly worried, "He isn't that old, is he?" 

    Watari smiled a little. "No, the last time we went up against him I did enough research to get a definite date of birth on the good doctor. As miraculous as it is that someone could become so evil so quickly, he's only in his mid thirties." 

    Hisoka nodded a little and went back to the file. After a few moments of silence, he put it down, scowling. "It just feels like there's some huge piece that we're missing," he complained. 

    "That would be the 'what the heck is doing this?' piece," Watari said helpfully. 

    Hisoka gave him a withering look. 

    Tsuzuki had to bite back a smile. "Can we have the files on the other victims? The more we have, the easier it'll be to spot some sort of common thread. Or, well, the more likely it'll be that the common thread is actually correct." 

    Watari nodded. "Just let me print those up for ya . . . it'll be a lot of paper, though." 

    "I know," Tsuzuki said complacently. "But Hisoka does all the paperwork." He winked at his younger partner, who gave him an affronted look. "Kidding, Hisoka," he assured him. 

    Tatsumi cleared his throat. "I'll be getting back to work," he said. "Inform me if there's anything you need." 

    "That doesn't cost money," Watari said in a low voice. The other two Shinigami couldn't help but snicker. Tatsumi gave them all the evil eye before leaving the room. "Saa, he needs to relax," Watari sighed. The printer whirred busily for a minute, and then he picked up the stack of papers and handed them over to Hisoka. "Here ya go, Bon. Don't do all the work for Tsuzuki!" 

    "I wouldn't dream of it," Hisoka said dryly. 

~~~~ 

    They had piles of paper all over the room. They had sorted and resorted, stacked and restacked, and still had yet to find anything that might be remotely considered useful. They had organized it according to which set of attacks, organized it according to first victim, then second, et cetera, organized it by gender and age. Tsuzuki had even 'organized' it by tossing the entire pile into the air and snatching pieces at random. 

    What was most telling about that misadventure was that Hisoka was so frustrated, he hadn't even complained. It seemed as good a method as any. 

    They ordered pizza and continued to read the files. Hisoka was beginning to feel like he had them all memorized. "There are really only a few basic correlations," he said, for what seemed like the hundredth time. "All the victims were between the ages of fifteen and thirty, and all of them were reasonably healthy." 

    "But that makes perfect sense," Tsuzuki said, flopping on the bed and staring up at the ceiling. "If you consider that this whatever-it-is seems to be sucking out their life force. Pick young, healthy people, and you get more life force." 

    "Right." Hisoka stared at the pile of papers. "No gender bias, nothing as obvious as co-workers or relatives . . ." 

    "But it can move," Tsuzuki said, sitting up and folding his legs underneath himself. "Because not all the sets of attacks are around here. Sometimes they'll be up in Hokkaido, or even as far away as Tokyo. Which is probably why no one noticed the repetitve strings of them before -- if it goes from region to region, it won't get the same Shinigami team twice." 

    Hisoka sighed in frustration. "We're not getting anywhere. What kind of thing can do this?" 

    "Suck life force?" Tsuzuki clarified, then shrugged when Hisoka nodded. "All kinds of things. Demons, spirits, whatever. It doesn't even need to be something supernatural -- a human could do it, if he had the right spell." 

    "But every fifteen years?" Hisoka asked skeptically. "For so long?" 

    "If he used the life force to enhance his own life, sure," Tsuzuki said. "There's not really anything we can rule out." 

    "Well, it's not a demon," Hisoka said. "Or else there would be records of it, and the Gushoshin would have let us know. So, some sort of spirit, or a human sorcerer." 

    "Every four days . . ." Tsuzuki said thoughtfully. 

    "Hm?" Hisoka looked up from the papers. Before Tsuzuki could answer, there was a knock on the door of their hotel room. Tsuzuki bounced over to answer it and get their dinner. After paying the delivery boy and chowing down an entire slice whole, he got back to what he'd been saying. 

    "Someone dies every four days," he said. "And from what the relatives said, the process of first losing their memory to finally dying takes about four days." He picked up another slice of pizza and started to munch on it. "So," he continued with his mouth full, "whatever this is, it can't concentrate on more than one person at a time. It 'infects' someone, for lack of a better term, then waits until they're dead to get someone else." 

    Hisoka nodded, picking up his own slice of pizza and scowling at it thoughtfully. "That doesn't really help us," he remarked. 

    "Well," Tsuzuki said, fishing a can of soda out of the pack he'd bought earlier, "it points more to a human sorcerer of some sort than a spirit. Spirits have more power, and they're . . . thinner, for lack of a better term. They can do more things at once. Also, spirits have a tendency to be tied to a place or an object. Humans have more mobility." 

    "So it's probably a human sorcerer," Hisoka surmised. 

    Tsuzuki nodded. "That would be my guess, anyway." 

    "Great," Hisoka said with a sigh. "That helps us . . . not at all." 

    "Eat your pizza," Tsuzuki said, nodding and smiling. "That'll help. You need your energy." 

    Hisoka mumbled something and began to nibble on the slice. He was far too frustrated to really feel hungry. It wasn't as if the pizza would go to waste; Tsuzuki would eat whatever he didn't. "By now, it's infected a new person," he said slowly. "Since the eighth victim died today." 

    "Yeah," Tsuzuki said. 

    "So . . ." Hisoka stood up. "Let's try the hospitals in the area. See if anyone's reported a case of amnesia today. If we can find the newest victim, we might be able to track it back to the killer." 

    "Wah! Hisoka, you're so smart!" Tsuzuki bounced to his feet, finishing off his third slice of pizza. "I don't know what I'd do without you . . ." 

    Hisoka allowed himself a rare smile. "Flounder, probably. Now let's get going." 

~~~~ 

    Hisoka flopped face first onto his bed. 

    "Come on, Hisoka," Tsuzuki said, "you couldn't have known that it wouldn't work. Don't be so hard on yourself." 

    "I should have known," Hisoka said stubbornly. "There was a basic flaw in my logic! Let's go see the people with no memory and ask them if they remember anything weird that happened that day. What a good idea." 

    Tsuzuki gave him an exasperated look. "Well, you didn't know if there would be a . . . a psychic thing of any sort. You know, like a mental presence or something." 

    Hisoka sighed. "Well, all we learned is that the victims don't have a psychic presence before they die. Because I couldn't feel anything from him. He was just . . . blank, like the soul had already departed but the body was still alive." 

    "You think that's it?" Tsuzuki asked thoughtfully. 

    "I don't know," Hisoka said. "Because that doesn't make any sense. The souls are turning up in the Meifu when the person dies. But if the soul departs as soon as the body is infected, where does it go for those four days?" 

    Tsuzuki sat down on the edge of the bed, contemplating the cold pizza. "I don't know," he finally said. 

    "Ugh," Hisoka proclaimed, and buried his face in the pillow. 

    "But you're all . . . tense and unhappy," Tsuzuki tried. "Something's bothering you, and it isn't just that we didn't make any progress today. Cases have gone slower than this before and you've been all right. What's wrong?" 

    "I don't like hospitals," Hisoka said shortly. His words were muffled in the pillow, and he turned his face to one side to make for easier breathing. 

    Tsuzuki considered this. "Oh," he finally said. "Because of . . . how you died?" 

    Hisoka nodded, unconsciously curling in on himself, hugging one of the pillows to his chest. He was unaware of how childlike the posture made him look, and he would have been horrified if he realized. "Yeah . . . three years there. No visitors . . . no one knowing what was happening to me. All the confusion of the doctors, and the other patients . . . their despair and pain as well as my own. Half the time I didn't even know whether or not I was the one hurting." 

    Tsuzuki stood up and settled on the edge of the bed next to Hisoka. He was completely at a loss as to what he should say; he didn't think there was anything that would help. 

    "But when it was me . . ." Hisoka closed his eyes. "It hurt so much. Muraki made it so that it would hurt. So I would suffer unbearably before I finally gave in and died. And I . . . I didn't understand then. I didn't know what was happening to me. I just knew that it . . . that it hurt, and that someone was slowly killing me. Even then, I knew that I was being murdered." 

    Tsuzuki reached out, not thinking about empathy or telepathy, only thinking about finding some way to comfort him. His fingers gently brushed through Hisoka's hair. Hisoka tensed, at first, then relaxed under Tsuzuki's touch, under the warmth of Tsuzuki's concern. 

    "So," he concluded, after a moment, "I don't like hospitals. It's like pain and suffering just hovers in the air, and I can't help but feel it." 

    "I don't like them either," Tsuzuki admitted. 

    Hisoka opened his eyes, glancing up at Tsuzuki curiously. "You were in one, weren't you?" 

    Tsuzuki nodded. "For eight years." 

    "Eight years . . ." Hisoka sighed a little. "And I thought three was bad." 

    "I don't remember most of it," Tsuzuki told him. "Just snatches of clarity here and there. Looking out and seeing the butterflies in the spring. But the rest of it . . . it's blurry. I don't remember dying. I don't even remember why I was in the hospital." 

    "Maybe some things are better left forgotten," Hisoka suggested. "I think I was happier before I remembered Muraki . . . and what he did to me." 

    "Maybe so," Tsuzuki agreed thoughtfully. 

    Hisoka sat up, leaning against the headboard of the bed. For a few minutes, they regarded each other seriously, and a thousand things passed between them, unsaid. "We should get some rest," Hisoka finally sighed. "It's late." 

    "Aa," Tsuzuki said, and stood up. They got ready in silence, and got into bed in silence. Hisoka turned off the light and both of them lay awake, remembering, trying not to remember. 

~~~~ 

    "Watari-san?" Tatsumi rapped on the door to the labratory. When there was no answer, he pushed it open and went inside. Watari had again fallen asleep on his desk. Tatsumi rolled his eyes. "Watari-san, wake up." 

    Watari stirred and mumbled something in his sleep, but otherwise made no response. Tatsumi sighed and shook him by the shoulder. "Ehh . . .?" Watari asked, peeking out from underneath his hair. "Is't morning already?" 

    Tatsumi rolled his eyes. "No," he said. "It's only about nine o'clock at night. You fell asleep again. Shouldn't you go home?" 

    "Most likely." Watari let out a wide yawn. "But I'm trying to . . . figure out this thing, still." 

    "You told Tsuzuki-san and Kurosaki-kun everything you know," Tatsumi said, surprised to find that he was still working on it. "Is there something more?" 

    "I think I might have an idea." Watari pushed his hair out of his face. As usual when he was working late, the hair tie had been discarded hours before. 003 was sitting on it. "But I'm not sure. I fell asleep." 

    "I see that," Tatsumi said dryly. 

    Watari sat up, shedding his lab coat and leaving it in a pile on his chair. This left him in a plain black turtleneck and torn blue jeans. Tatsumi raised an eyebrow; even for Watari, those clothes were a bit casual for the workplace. Watari caught his glance and shrugged. "Didn't want to wear yesterday's clothes all day," he said. "Found these underneath the desk. They were pretty dusty!" he added cheerfully, picking up a stack of papers. 

    "What's all this?" Tatsumi asked, looking at the papers. "They look like old newspapers." 

    "That's exactly what they are," Watari said. "It occurred to me that maybe this thing isn't just sucking up power for its own needs -- maybe it's doing something with it. Or maybe there's a side effect. Something. So here I have the newspapers for the day after the last death, back for the last four attacks. Also . . ." He picked up some more papers, "I have the JuohCho's records for the days." 

    Tatsumi looked at the newspapers. "And . . .?" he asked. 

    "And we're going to have a slumber party and read them!" Watari said. 

    Tatsumi's eyebrow twitched. "I notice your use of the word 'we' in that sentence." 

    "Very astute of you." Watari offered him a newspaper. 

    Tatsumi sighed and accepted it. "If I make a single error tomorrow in my budget calculations, you'll hear about it," he threatened. "Staying up all night to read newspapers . . . it's a wild goose chase." 

    "Geese are better than nothing," Watari said, settling Indian-style on the floor. "Especially wild geese." 

    Tatsumi sighed and examined the newspapers. "Is that your way of saying that since we don't have anything so far, looking for a lead anywhere is better than not looking at all?" 

    Watari grinned. "You're so perceptive!" 

    "Watari-san?" 

    "Hai?" 

    "Sometimes I really don't like you." 

~~~~ 


	4. Chapter Three

_This chapter is too short and I don't like it, but after this, I get to the good stuff! Like, the original premise of the fic. -_-;;_

Chapter Three 

    "Ne, Tatsumi . . ." 

    Tatsumi shook himself quickly. "Yes?" he asked, flipping to another page in the newspaper he was looking at and trying to pretend he hadn't been asleep, not even for the shortest of moments. 

    Watari's lips quirked in a smile. "Maybe you should go take a nap. We've been here all night, you know." 

    Tatsumi glared at him. "I'm perfectly awake, thank you. What did you need?" 

    Watari yawned and stretched. "Other than breakfast, a hot shower, and clean clothes?" he asked dryly. Though jokes were often made about Watari living in his office, he tried not to prove them true most of the time. "I need that stack of papers that you were not sleeping on top of." 

    Tatsumi admirably managed to not turn pink in the slightest. He simply picked up the folder and handed it over. "Do you think you have something?" 

    "I think I finally may," Watari said in a satisfied tone of voice. 

    Tatsumi made a comment underneath his breath about how, if he'd known that Watari was going to be fine on his own, he wouldn't have bothered to stay. That was uncharitable at best. "Do you want some coffee?" he asked. "I think I'm going to go get some." 

    "Coffee'd be great, thanks," Watari said absently, too absorbed in his reading to even make a crack about Tatsumi being nicer than usual. 

    He flipped to a certain page in the folder as Tatsumi left the room, then shuffled through the mess on his desk. By the time Tatsumi came back with two mugs of coffee, he had four sheets of paper lined up in front of him and was looking quite pleased with himself. "Take a look," he said, gesturing to the papers. 

    Tatsumi handed him one of the mugs of coffee and bent over his shoulder. He scanned the papers and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. "What is it?" he asked. "And don't just say 'look closer', or you'll be wearing this coffee." 

    "These clothes are just about done for anyway," Watari said cheerfully. However, he didn't torture Tatsumi any longer. He took out a yellow highlighter and highlighted four lines of text: one on each sheet. 

    Tatsumi glanced down. "Same name, four times. What are these lists?" 

    "Pages of the Kiseki." 

    Tatsumi nearly choked on his coffee. "How did you get these?!" 

    "Hi~mi~tsu!" Watari grinned at him. "Aw, c'mon, you know me. Just because they're locked up in that castle doesn't mean that no one ever entered them into the computer. And where the computer goes, I go. Anyway, that's the guy we're looking for. Every fifteen years, like clockwork, his time runs out and he's supposed to die, but he's doing this . . . thing, to stop it." 

    "This . . . thing," Tatsumi said dryly. "I'll be sure to relay your nice specific explanation to Tsuzuki-san and Kurosaki-kun." 

    Watari glared at him. "Look, do you have any idea what he'd be doing?" 

    "No," Tatsumi admitted. 

    "Then don't make fun of me. Just call them up and get them here and I'm sure between the four of us, we'll figure it out." 

~~~~ 

    "So let me get this straight," Hisoka said, studying the sheets of paper. "Whoever's doing this is basically doing a spell every fifteen years to renew his life force. And the reason it's so regular is because the energy he manages to gather always runs out at the same time. Right?" 

    "Right," Watari said. He was sitting on the edge of his desk, his legs swinging back and forth, and looking quite pleased with himself. "That's all it is. Pretty simple, ne?" 

    "Very simple," Hisoka said. "And the simplicity of it is going to make him impossible to catch." 

    "Mou, Hisoka, how hard can it be?" Tsuzuki asked, looking disappointed with his younger partner. "We even have his name!" 

    "Oh, yeah," Hisoka said. "And I'm sure he's listed in the directory, too." 

    Tsuzuki wilted. 

    Watari shrugged. "You're doing better than you were the other day, aren't you? Whatcha looking so down for?" 

    "He's just in a bad mood," Tsuzuki confided to the scientist in an undertone. "He doesn't like hospitals." 

    Hisoka stood up. "Let's get going," he said briefly, and left the office without waiting for Tsuzuki. The older Shinigami pouted and bounded after him. 

    "So where to?" he asked, once the two of them had transported back to Chijou. Hisoka sat on one of the beds in their hotel room, and was looking intensely thoughtful. "The draining process must take four days," Tsuzuki added thoughtfully. "He probably steals their soul away to wherever he is and imprisons it until he's siphoned off all its power. That's why the man last night had no psychic essence." 

    Hisoka nodded. "Yeah. And once it's renewed, he just goes back to . . . whatever it is he's doing." 

    They sat in silence for a long minute. 

    "Who would want eternal life anyway?" Hisoka asked, looking out the window. It had begun to rain; the entire world was a dreary grey color. He had always hated rain, until that day that Tsuzuki had accepted him as his partner. It had been raining that day. He didn't hate it anymore. 

    Tsuzuki shrugged. "We do." 

    "No, we don't," Hisoka said wearily. "We just accept it as part of the job. No one wants to live forever." 

    Tsuzuki accepted this with a nod. 

    "I was going to leave," Hisoka said quietly. "That was my plan. I became a Shinigami to find out who had killed me, and after that I was going to leave. And yet . . . I stayed. I didn't go on like I had intended to." 

    "Why not?" Tsuzuki asked curiously. 

    Hisoka shook his head. "I don't really know." 

    Tsuzuki wanted to ask if it was because of him, and he wanted to badly, but he knew that Hisoka wouldn't answer. And even if he did answer, he would be annoyed about it. Besides, he couldn't count on it to be true; Hisoka had decided to stay before the two of them had officially become partners. That couldn't be the only reason. 

    He flopped backwards onto the bed. "There must be some way to track him," he said, after the long moment of silence that had followed Hisoka's statement. 

    Hisoka picked up the phone book and flipped through. "Not listed," he finally said in a monotone, putting it back into the drawer. "As we expected. And Watari would have already looked to see if he could find him anywhere online." 

    "So, we're back at square one, with only a name to help us," Tsuzuki said. "I don't suppose the families of any of the people he's killed would know him? I mean, enough to give us a description?" 

    Hisoka shook his head. "He probably picks strangers off the streets. Much safer that way." 

    "Unless the spell is complicated," Tsuzuki said eagerly. "It could take days to put something into effect." 

    "I really doubt it," Hisoka said, still shaking his head. "This guy is obviously really careful. If it was something that easy, he would have been caught before, by one of the other Shinigami who had been sent to investigate. No, my guess is that all he needs is minimal touch, and if more than that, it wouldn't take longer than an hour." 

    Tsuzuki sighed. "So now what?" he asked. 

    "I don't know," Hisoka said. "I just wish there was some way we could use the latest victim to track him . . . it's too bad we didn't know the victim beforehand, because then I could try to trace their essence, but . . ." 

    "We could trick him into taking me!" Tsuzuki said. "Then you could track me!" 

    "Of course, that would involve finding him first," Hisoka said dryly. 

    Tsuzuki deflated. "There must be something we can do," he said dismally. 

    Hisoka pushed his hair out of his face. "It does really feel like there's some obvious solution we're missing," he admitted. "I just have no idea what that would actually be." 

    "This isn't that big a city," Tsuzuki said hopefully. "Maybe we should try just wandering around and seeing if we find anything useful. Anyone out of the ordinary. If we ran into this guy, do you think you'd be able to tell? Empathically, I mean." 

    "Maybe," Hisoka said, though he sounded doubtful. "I mean, empathically speaking, he would be . . . hm, larger isn't the word I want, but maybe more intense? Because he's carrying around more than himself with him. I could try, I suppose." 

    "Then let's go! I want lunch." 

    Hisoka rolled his eyes, but he followed Tsuzuki out of the hotel. 

~~~~ 

    They had wandered the small city for nearly two hours, before they gave up and took a break for lunch at a small sushi bar. Hisoka was discouraged and tired and in general didn't feel like eating. No matter how many pieces of sushi Tsuzuki waved in his face, for the most part, he ignored his lunch. 

    Tsuzuki happily ate his own and then Hisoka's. The fruitlessness of the day didn't seem to bother him. Hisoka knew better; he knew how easily Tsuzuki got disheartened when cases were going nowhere. 

    It was that, more than anything, that was the cause of Hisoka's decision. 

    "Let's try something new," he said, once Tsuzuki had devoured every last bit of sushi on both their plates. 

    Tsuzuki blinked at him, wondering why Hisoka had suddenly announced this. He would think that if there was anything they hadn't yet tried, Hisoka would have brought it up hours ago. "What?" he asked, examining the bill and then frowning at Tatsumi's expense booklet. 

    "Something so old and so evil would have a specific psychic scent, for lack of a better term," Hisoka said with a sigh. "And it would be strong. If I let down my shields, I should be able to sense it, no matter how far away it is." 

    Tsuzuki blinked at him. "Let down your shields?" he asked, alarmed. "Entirely? Hisoka, that's dangerous!" 

    "You think I don't know that?" Hisoka snapped. 

    "But . . . really, really dangerous!" Tsuzuki said, as if this was a different statement entirely. "You said that even as a kid you could partially shield! If you let them down all the way you might get lost in everyone else's minds!" 

    "Do you want to catch who's doing this or not?" Hisoka asked angrily. He pushed back from the table and stalked out of the restaurant. Tsuzuki hurriedly put some money on the table and followed. Hisoka was walking quite quickly, and it took Tsuzuki quite a few minutes to catch up with him. 

    "Hisoka . . ." he said, and then caught the green-eyed Shinigami's glare. "Are you sure?" he finally asked. 

    "I'm sure," Hisoka said resolutely. "We're never going to catch him by just wandering around, hoping. There has to be a better way." 

    "But what if . . . what if you get lost out there?" Tsuzuki asked, then added in a quieter voice, "What if you don't come back to me?" 

    Hisoka forced back a shudder. The thought of his mind drifting, assaulted on all sides by the horrible mess and noise that was humanity, was not a pleasant one. But if Tsuzuki saw him uncomfortable with the idea, he would try to stop him from doing it, and as far as Hisoka was concerned, there was no other way. "I will," he said firmly. "Only touch makes me synch with other people -- this will just be sensing. It's not as dangerous as it seems." 

    Tsuzuki gave him a suspicious look, then nodded. "Should I do anything?" 

    Hisoka shrugged. "Not much you can do." He spotted a bench and sat down on it, making himself as comfortable as popular. "Just keep people from bothering me." 

    "Are you going to do it right here?" Tsuzuki asked, surprised. 

    "Aa . . . our hotel is on the edge of town. It'll be easier from here." 

    "Well, okay . . ." Tsuzuki looked around. There were plenty of people out walking around, and he wasn't sure how he could keep any of them from wondering what Hisoka was doing if he just sat there with his eyes closed. "I suppose touch would make it harder?" he surmised. Hisoka gave him a suspicious glance, then nodded. Tsuzuki plopped down on the bench next to him and determined that if anyone gave them a strange look, he would just give them his best smile. That ought to get rid of most people. 

    Hisoka closed his eyes. He had learned more and more about controlling his empathy ever since becoming a Shinigami, and letting go of that control completely was wildly against his instinct. It was going to take more effort to do that than it normally did to keep it under wraps. 

    He started out small -- sensing Tsuzuki next to him, his gentle concern and worry over the situation. The other minds on the street were easier to sense. He stretched his mind further, flexing his mental muscles. 

    And couldn't let go. 

    He frowned slightly and felt a flare of worry from Tsuzuki. His control had been so hard-won, and he kept as much as he could clenched in an iron fist so much of the time, that this was going to be near impossible. 

    The best way to lose control was to attempt to do something that would normally be completely impossible for him. Keeping this in mind, he tried to stretch his mind towards the Meifu. The reach was not impossible, but then he ran up against the dimensional barrier, spun out of control -- 

    and was everywhere at once. 

    _// I can't even believe that they gave the promotion to Kiyoshi. That lazy ass never does anything to help out! // // God, I hate traffic these days. I'm going to be late -- // _

    

    // so you can see that if you carry the one into the tens column -- // 

    // English is so hard to learn! Can't they just stick to one way of pronouncing things?// // are you going to be all right? // 

    

    //well, that's the good news// 

    and spun further out until he ran up against another barrier and braced himself against it for a few seconds before he was dragged down in the maelstrom of humanity. But this time his descent was just a tiny bit more controlled, and he was able to look, to search -- 

    And when he found it, the presence was so intense he was amazed it had taken him so long. 

    Everything was dark, and the figure was cloaked in shadow, but it turned and it looked at him, and smiled. A welcoming, beckoning smile. 

    Hisoka's eyes snapped open. 

    "Are you all right?" Tsuzuki asked him worriedly, and Hisoka realized with some amount of embarrassment that he was being cradled in the older Shinigami's arms. 

    "Aa . . ." He shook his head to clear it. "Did I pass out?" 

    "No, you just fell over," Tsuzuki said brightly, as if this might be considered and improvement. "Did you find anything useful?" 

    "Yes, but . . ." Hisoka closed his eyes as the emotions of everyone around him threatened to swallow him. He couldn't manage to build his shields back up to full strength. Somehow, he had lost that vital piece of separation that he carried with him at all times. "Yes," he finally said. "I found him." 

    "So what should we do?" Tsuzuki asked, giving him a careful look. Normally, he would have been gung ho about taking off to track the killer down, but Hisoka was looking extremely pale and unhappy. 

    Hisoka pulled out of Tsuzuki's arms and stood. The voices crowded in on him and he wavered slightly. "We should go," he said. "I can track him. I don't think he's far." He had unconsciously assigned a gender to the person in question, from what he had felt of their mind. Tracking a mind was not something he could usually do, unless he got a flash of their actual position from their minds, but this was different. This mind was so large, so loud, that he couldn't help but be drawn to it like a moth to flame. 

    He shuddered at the analogy. It wasn't helping his nerves. 

    "All right," Tsuzuki said, and put an arm around his shoulders. 

    Hisoka pushed him away, a bit more roughly than he had intended. "I'm all right to walk," he snapped, and started to wobble down the street. 

    "Hisoka, wait . . ." Tsuzuki hurried to catch up with him. "Do you think this is such a good idea? You're acting kind of funny. You look dazed." 

    "I can't block everyone out." Hisoka pressed one hand against his temple, as if the physical action might help. "My shields aren't working very well. I'll need total quiet and probably at least a few hours to rebuild them to full strength, and we don't have time for that right now. If we can find him, we can maybe return the last soul to its body and they won't have to die." 

    Tsuzuki gave him another worried look, but nodded. "At least let me help you." 

    "If you touch me, I won't be able to track him," Hisoka said sharply. 

    Tsuzuki drooped. "All right . . ." 

    Hisoka kept walking. That presence was like a hornet's nest in his head, and the incessant buzzing was coming close to drowning out everything else. He couldn't get away from the image of that smile. Or the image of a moth getting caught in a flame. 

    He stopped abruptly. 

    "What?" Tsuzuki asked. 

    "It's calling me . . . I think he must know that we're coming . . . probably even who we are, what we are." 

    Tsuzuki gave him a serious look. "What do you want to do?" 

    "What can we do?" Hisoka countered, and he started walking again. 

    Tsuzuki put both hands in his pocket, his fingers tightening on one of his ofuda. Hisoka's path gradually led them out of the more populated part of the city, and he stopped on the outskirts of a small playground. It was deserted, and obviously had been for some time; there was rust on the monkey bars and one of the swings was only connected on one side. 

    Hisoka started to shiver and couldn't stop. The buzzing was so loud that even when Tsuzuki turned to him and said something, he couldn't hear. He had never met anyone or anything that simply gave off static. No thoughts, no images, no emotions. Just that same buzzing static. 

    There was a girl sitting on the swingset. She looked about ten years old; her shining black hair was in pigtails, her dark eyes framed by small glasses, wearing red overalls and a white shirt. 

    She smiled, that same welcoming smile. "Konnichi wa." Her voice was light, but low. It did not sound like the voice of a ten year old girl. 

    Hisoka went to his knees. The buzzing had gotten so loud that it now sounded like someone was screaming inside his head. Tsuzuki's eyes widened and he knelt beside Hisoka, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Hisoka? What's wrong?" 

    Hisoka drew in a harsh breath and spoke the only words he could think of. "Kill it," he whispered. "Oh, God, kill it, it's evil, Tsuzuki, kill it!" 

    Tsuzuki stared at Hisoka for a long minute before looking back at the girl. She climbed off her swing and walked forward, and Tsuzuki yanked out a handful of ofuda, ready to do -- something -- he wasn't sure what. 

    Hisoka pressed both his hands against his face and began to scream. 

    The girl smiled, looking at Tsuzuki's ofuda. "I'm afraid those won't be necessary," she said. She reached her hand out to both of them. Tsuzuki knew of at least a dozen ways to make her stop, but he could feel himself falling. Though it seemed to take an eternity, in all reality it was only a few seconds before the world went dark. 

~~~~ 


	5. Chapter Four

_See! This fic isn't dead after all! XD But I'm sort of liberal with characterization from now on... Tsuzuki's especially. You'll see why. ^_~_

Chapter Four 

    After what seemed like thousands of years, Kurosaki Hisoka blinked awake. His head was throbbing, and his back ached with stiffness. After a few seconds, he realized dazedly that he was curled on his side in the middle of a playground. He sat up and rubbed both hands over his face, looking around. He didn't recognize where he was. 

    There was a man lying on the ground beside him, also unconscious. Hisoka studied him for a few seconds, noting his dark trenchcoat and suit, and the pieces of paper clutched tightly in one hand. His soft brown hair was falling in his eyes. 

    Hisoka cradled his head in his hands. There was a faint buzzing in his ears that he could not stop. He wondered if it was a strange way of his empathy acting up. And why was he at a playground? Where was he? There were no playgrounds near his house that he knew of, and in any he wasn't allowed out of the cellar, and in any case, the last time he checked he had been in the hospital. 

    Dying. 

    His eyes widened. 

    The other man groaned slightly and sat up, pressing the heel of his hand against his forehead. "Unnh, where am I?" he asked. He scanned his surroundings uncertainly, and Hisoka was surprised to see that he had eyes the color of amethyst. Those eyes were now resting on him. "Who are you?" 

    "Kurosaki Hisoka," he answered, shifting uncomfortably. "You?" 

    "Tsuzuki Asato. Do you know how I got here?" 

    Hisoka thought about it, then shook his head. "No. I only woke up a few minutes ago. I don't know where we are or how either of us got here. Do you remember anything?" 

    Tsuzuki's face creased in a slight frown. "The last thing I remember . . . is . . ." 

    His breath hitched in his throat and one hand automatically went to clutch his wrist. 

    "What?" Hisoka asked. He was wracking his brain for a memory himself. Did he remember dying? He wasn't sure. He remembered the hospital, and a lot of pain. He wasn't sure if it was possible to remember dying after one was dead. Was this some version of Heaven or Hell? It seemed odd that the afterlife would consist of being tossed onto a playground with a complete stranger. 

    A choked, whistling sob was his only answer. 

    "Ano . . . Tsuzuki-san?" he asked hesitantly. "Are you all right?" 

    "I think I'm dead," the other man whispered. 

    Oddly enough, the primary emotion that greeted Hisoka at this statement was profound relief. If Tsuzuki thought he was dead, then maybe he, Hisoka, wasn't wrong about himself being dead. It was strangely comforting to know that he 'remembered' correctly. 

    Still, the grief and panic was flowing from Tsuzuki in waves, so Hisoka thought he might want to say something. "It's okay," he said, then reflected that it was a very strange thing to say. "I think I'm dead, too. So maybe . . ." 

    "This is Hell," Tsuzuki said, in a hollow voice. "I must have gone to Hell. I wouldn't have deserved anything else." 

    "Excuse me," Hisoka snapped, "I don't think I was about to go to Hell, so you can't be in Hell either." But even as he spoke the words, his stomach twisted. Maybe after everything, his parents were right. Maybe he was a monster. Maybe after sixteen years of torment, he was going somewhere even worse. 

    Maybe . . . 

    Hisoka swallowed hard. The memory of the pain the curse had caused was vivid in his mind. 

    "It must be," Tsuzuki said, crossing his arms over his chest and hugging himself. "It must be Hell." 

    "Shut up, stupid," Hisoka said. The butterflies in his stomach were turning to snakes. He thought he might throw up. Could dead people throw up? A hysterical giggle started to build up in his throat. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe and he was going to pass out any second now. Did dead people need to breathe? 

    Tsuzuki had curled up into a ball and was rocking himself back in forth, repeating "We're in Hell" over and over again, underneath his breath. 

    "SHUT UP!" Hisoka yelled, but his words had absolutely no effect. He couldn't breathe, and every time Tsuzuki repeated his mantra, he felt his throat grow tighter and even less air could get in. 

    He slapped Tsuzuki hard across the face. 

    There was a shocked pause. Tsuzuki took in a deep, shuddering breath. 

    "Sorry," Hisoka said. "Sorry. But you were freaking out and you were freaking me out and . . . I freaked out," he finished lamely. "But I don't think we're in Hell. Are you okay?" 

    There was a pause, then Tsuzuki nodded slightly. His eyes lost their unfocused look, and he began to look around. "But . . . everything looks different," he said uncertainly. He frowned at the buildings on the other side of the street from the playground. "The buildings are . . . taller and . . . harder, somehow." He frowned slightly, having trouble articulating what he was thinking. 

    Hisoka raised his hands in surrender, then climbed to his feet. "I'm out of ideas. Let's walk around and ask someone where we are." 

    Tsuzuki nodded and accepted the hand up that Hisoka offered. 

    They walked in silence for a few minutes, both lost in their thoughts. Tsuzuki's hand rubbed constantly at his watch and the scar underneath. Hisoka crossed his arms over his chest and shivered. The emotions of the people around him were flooding into his senses, making him disoriented. 

    "Excuse me." Hisoka stopped a young woman. "We were walking and we got a bit lost. Do you know exactly where we are?" 

    She blinked at him, then noticed she was talking to two handsome young men and blushed slightly. "Uh, yeah. You're on the north edge of town. If you take this road straight for a long ways, you'll get back to the main street." 

    Hisoka sighed a little. "What town?" 

    "Aomori," she said uncertainly. 

    "All right, thank you," Hisoka said, and started to walk again. 

    Tsuzuki called after her. "Ano . . . what's the date?" 

    She turned. "You two really are lost," she said, looking startled. 

    "Yes," Tsuzuki said, looking worried. 

    "It's August fifteenth," she said, and continued on her way. Tsuzuki and Hisoka walked in more silence until they reached town. 

    "I don't think this is Heaven or Hell," Hisoka finally said. "I think we must just be in Japan. I mean, she didn't seem confused or anything. And if dead people are in and out all the time, you'd think they'd be used to weird questions like that." 

    Tsuzuki had to admit that what Hisoka said made sense. "I suppose," he said. "But why would we . . ." He swallowed hard. "Why would we die but still be on earth?" 

    "I don't know," Hisoka said. "Were you from Aomori?" 

    Tsuzuki shook his head. 

    "Me neither . . . so why here, of all places?" 

    "I don't know." Tsuzuki stopped walking and was looking at a newspaper stand. "Hi . . . Hisoka . . ." 

    Hisoka stopped and glanced at what Tsuzuki was pointing at with a shaking finger. At first he thought it was something in the headlines of the newspaper, then his eyes landed on the date. It was indeed August fifteenth, but the year given was two years after he had died. 

    "What the hell?" he breathed out slowly. 

    Tsuzuki backed away slowly. 

    Hisoka turned to him. "What year . . . what year did you die?" he said, fortunately having enough thought to lower his voice so they didn't get funny looks. 

    "1926 . . ." Tsuzuki whispered. 

    Hisoka felt the hysterical giggle rising in his throat again. Funny, he didn't remember often getting hysterical. Was this something about being dead? Or was it just because he was very, very confused? "1926? But I died in 1996. There's something about that . . . that's just not right." The giggle escaped. "I guess we know why the buildings look different." 

    Tsuzuki just stared at him. Then he turned and started to push through the crowd. 

    "Hey, wait!" Hisoka tried to catch up, alarmed at the thought of losing the only person who was a link to what was going on. He groaned in frustration as Tsuzuki started to run, vanishing around a corner. "God damn it, wait!" 

    But when he rounded the corner, Tsuzuki was already gone. 

~~~~ 

    Hisoka settled on a bench. He had been chasing after Tsuzuki for half an hour, and had finally run out of energy. The other man had simply vanished into the crowd, and Hisoka had no idea how to find him. 

    He decided it was high time he sat down to consider the problem logically. He was never going to get anywhere running all over the city like a chicken with its head cut off. He had begun to wonder if he was really dead at all. 

    Days in the hospital had blurred together in a way that was almost frightening. He knew he had been there for about three years. One of the most recent, and most vivid memories was when his favorite nurse brought him a present for what she jokingly called their three-year anniversary. 

    Everything after that was a blur of pain, needles underneath his skin, the haze of new drugs or medicine. That was all he could remember. 

    But two years had passed since then. What if one of the drugs had worked? What if he was really alive? 

    For the first time since he had woken up, he found himself daring to hope. The other man had obviously been emotionally disturbed. He must have just been confused when he had said that he had died in 1926. He wasn't anywhere near that old. 

    As for his own age, well, he didn't look like he was eighteen, but maybe he was a late bloomer? That had to be it, that was all. He was alive; they'd come up with some cure, but amnesia had been a side effect of the drug and he'd forgotten some things, that was all. And he would figure out why he'd been on a playground in Aomori just as soon as he got in touch with his family. 

    That, however, was a bit of a sobering thought. He didn't think his parents would particularly want to see him. 

    But it had been two years. Things could have changed. Their attitudes could have changed. They had to have changed. Hisoka got off the bench in sudden, inexplicable excitement, and headed for a bus station. 

    He stopped abruptly when he realized that he didn't know where there was a train or bus station. He felt in his pockets and came out with a battered wallet. There was about three thousand yen folded up, and no forms of identification. He scowled and wondered if that was enough money to get to his house. 

    Hisoka wandered towards the nearest main street in search of a train station. It was crowded, and he flinched away involuntarily before realizing that the crowd wasn't really giving him trouble. Even from the first day his empathy had appeared, he'd had partial shields, but crowds had always bothered him. But now, although he could still feel the people on the periphery of his senses, it wasn't anywhere near the throbbing noise he would have expected. 

    Somewhere, in the past two years, he had learned the control his empathy. 

    This didn't tally so well with the thoughts of him being alive, and he sat down to consider it. His parents had been all for repressing and hiding his empathy. They wouldn't have taken well to his getting lessons on how to control it. 

    However, he had to take into consideration that he had been a child then. Now, although he still wasn't an adult, if he'd had two years without pain to learn control by himself . . . maybe he wouldn't have needed lessons. He tried to enforce the shields and found that it came naturally. What little he could sense from the crowd faded even more. 

    This was better than great. Maybe now he would finally have a chance at a life. He was over that strange 

    _(curse)_

    disease, and could control his empathy . . . then just maybe . . . 

    He got directions to the train station and managed to find a fairly cheap ticket for a train that left in two hours. The crowd at the station was heavier and started to bother his empathy. The slight buzzing was now back in his ears, and he shook himself slightly. Probably nothing to worry about, just 

    _(a moth caught in the flame)_

    some strange side effect of the control over his empathy, or something like that. 

    He sat and waited, and felt slightly bad about leaving the other man somewhere in Aomori. He thought that Tsuzuki probably had some reason to be acting the way he had; perhaps a life as traumatic as his own had been. But since he had run off, Hisoka didn't see much he could do. He hadn't been near him long enough to be able to sense his empathic presence with any reliability. 

    Hopefully, Tsuzuki would find whatever he was looking for. Hisoka decided that after he had been to see his family, and had gotten to the bottom of all this, he would come back to Aomori and look for the older man. It wouldn't be right to leave him wandering around in confusion. 

    So it was with only slight misgivings that, two hours later, Hisoka boarded a train to go home for the first time in years. 

~~~~ 

    Watari slept in. Tatsumi had given him the day off, which Watari thought was quite fair, given that he had just worked three days in a row. It was lucky that nothing ever happened in Kyoto; it kept him from having actual assignments very often. Since that was the territory of most of the spiritualists and onmyouji in Japan, they tended to keep a lid on things themselves. 

    The phone rang around noon, and he was still sprawled in bed, though he was awake. He was sprawled out over his blankets with his hair down, reading one of his many scientific journals. It always paid to keep up with the latest discoveries. 003 was perched on the phone, and jumped when it rang, her feathers ruffling as if she thought the phone was a personal insult. 

    Watari pressed the speaker phone button with his toe. "Moshi moshi, Watari desu!" 

    "It's Tatsumi." 

    "Mo~u, you gave me the day off," Watari protested. "There can't be anything you need that I didn't find in the past three days. What's up?" 

    "Tsuzuki-san and Kurosaki-kun didn't check in today." 

    Watari sat up slowly. 

    "Furthermore, a certain white-haired doctor was seen in Aomori." 

    "I'll be at the office in twenty minutes," Watari said, and pressed the button on the phone. He pulled on clothes hastily, tucking 003 into the pocket of his jacket. A sandwich was quickly made, and he ate it as he walked to work, drinking tea from a thermos. 

    Tatsumi was waiting when he got there, which he thought was a sign of how worried the secretary truly had to be. 

    "You're gonna wear a track in the floor," Watari said, watching him pace. "No word from Tsuzuki or Bon?" 

    "None," Tatsumi said. "Not even when I deliberately tried to get in touch with them. I sent Gushoshin Elder to go look for them nearly an hour ago, but Aomori is a large city and he still hasn't found anyone." 

    "What about Muraki?" Watari asked. 

    "As far as I know, he has nothing to do with this," Tatsumi said in a thin voice. "I've been keeping tabs on him since Kyoto -- " Watari nodded here; everyone had been aware of this except Tsuzuki -- "and he only came to Aomori this morning. He hasn't interacted with Tsuzuki-san or Kurosaki-kun that we know of." 

    "Well, that's good anyway," Watari said, relieved at this information. "But I guess we have no idea why they wouldn't have checked in, ne? Bon was usually pretty good about that, as scatter-brained as Tsuzuki was . . ." 

    "Normally I wouldn't worry quite this much," Tatsumi admitted. "I would think they had gotten sidetracked in the assignment somehow and not had time or reason to check in . . . but I'd like to tell Kurosaki-kun at least that Muraki is there. He would react better than Tsuzuki-san, I believe. And then I tried to contact them, and they didn't answer, and . . . I believe something's wrong." 

    Watari pushed his glasses up his nose and fished 003 out of his pocket. The owl was more than a little squashed; she let out an indignant hoot and nipped at Watari's fingers in a manner that was only partially affectionate before fluttering away. "You think this has something to do with the case?" 

    Tatsumi paused in his pacing and looked out the window for a very long minute. "What do you think would happen if this . . . whatever it is . . . discovered that Shinigami were after it?" 

    Watari shrugged. "It might move. You think Tsuzuki and Bon went after it? No," he said immediately, tossing aside his own theory. "You wouldn't be worried if that was it. What are you thinking?" 

    "This thing eats psychic energy," Tatsumi said, starting to sound impatient. "And what has more of that than a Shinigami?" 

    Watari's eyes widened. 

    "We need to find them," Tatsumi said, his voice strained. "Because if the worst has happened, we only have four days." 

~~~~ 

    Tsuzuki slumped down on the side of the road, trying to catch his breath. Everything was so damned loud and confusing. With every moment that passed, he became more and more convinced that he had to be in Hell. This didn't particularly surprise him, but it certainly didn't make him feel great, either. 

    He took off his watch and examined the scar on his wrist soberly. Apparently, it had finally been enough to kill him. No complaints there, but . . . 

    _// "I don't think this is Heaven or Hell. I think we must just be in Japan." //_

    Tsuzuki shook his head, anxious to block out that voice. The younger man couldn't have been right. He had died and gone to Hell for his sins. There was no other explanation. All right, he had to admit that he didn't know why Hell looked like downtown Aomori, or why no one seemed confused except for him, but there just couldn't be another explanation. 

    He deserved to go to Hell, and he had. 

    Given this conclusion, it didn't really seem worth it to go anywhere. He sat slumped on the curb and didn't move. There was nowhere to go. Nowhere to be. Just an eternity of nothing. 

    Scowling, he slammed his fist down on the pavement. The pain helped a little, bringing him back to his senses. He glanced down at his knuckles and at the trickle of blood that was sliding towards the tips of his fingers. 

    As he watched, the small wound closed and the bruise faded. 

    He stared at his hand in disbelief. He couldn't hurt himself. 

    Tsuzuki slammed his fist down harder, hard enough to break his knuckles. The throbbing lasted only seconds. The bones knit back into place and the skin healed over them. 

    His hands began to shake. 

    He got up and began to walk again, shoving his shaking and healed hands deep down into his pockets. He couldn't deny the pit of fear that had begun to grow in his stomach. He was dead; that was fine. He had wanted to die, wanted his life to end, wanted it so badly that his repeated attempts to suicide had finally worked. 

    _Every time, I healed a bit slower,_ he thought dreamily, staring up at the sky as he walked. 

    But now, apparently, he was back at square one. He was in 

    _(Japan) _

    Hell, and there didn't seem to be any way out. He didn't have the option of escape that life had supposedly given him. There would just be this endless emptiness, this lack of purpose, this wandering. 

    Suddenly, without reason, he wished that he hadn't run away from Hisoka. The younger boy had seemed to be calm and collected, if confused. He felt that he could use some calm right now. Some explanation, no matter what kind. He sat with a thud on the curb again, feeling like he might cry. 

    A shadow fell over him. 

    "Tsuzuki-san?" 

    Tsuzuki looked up to see a man with a white coat, with silver hair, with a slight smile that twisted around the corners of his mouth. He did not see a murderer or a rapist. He simply saw a man. 

    "It's a pleasure to see you, as always." The smile grew wider, more twisted, more predatory. 

    Tsuzuki was so glad to have found a friend that he didn't even notice. 

~~~~ 

_Woohoo! Three cliffhangers at once, a new record! Also, Muraki seems to show up at the end of my chapters a lot. Heehee, wonder why that could be... ^_~_


	6. Chapter Five

Chapter Five 

    "I-I . . . I know you?" Tsuzuki assumed in a timid voice. Well, that just made no sense. If he was in Hell, how would he know people? Then again, why would it be 1998 in Hell when he had died in 1926? He had a feeling that he was missing something big. 

    There was a faint hint of confusion in Muraki's grey eyes, then it was gone and replaced with something much more dangerous: curiosity. "The last time I checked, you were indeed an acquaintance of mine," he said smoothly. He offered his hand to Tsuzuki to help him up. "I'm Muraki Kazutaka." 

    Tsuzuki looked at him nervously, then shook his head and pressed himself up against the building he had been leaning against. "I don't . . . I don't remember. I don't remember anything." 

    The curiosity in Muraki's eyes now changed to a glint. "I see," he said. His hand was still held out to Tsuzuki. "You look a bit under the weather. Why don't you come with me for a bit and I'll see what I can do?" 

    Tsuzuki gave him a look. "How did I know you?" he asked. "When did I know you? The last thing I remember is d . . . is d-dying." 

    "We've been friends for quite some time now," Muraki said, his voice soothing, reassuring. "I think I can explain a lot of what you're missing, if you'll come with me." He smiled slightly. "You always did require a great deal of taking care of." 

    Tsuzuki hesitated, then nodded, and accepted Muraki's hand up. 

    Muraki's smile was smug, as he put his arm around Tsuzuki's shoulder and guided him through the crowd. He had no idea what had led up to this fortunate turn of events, but he wasn't about to question. "Are you hungry, Tsuzuki-san?" 

    "Not really," Tsuzuki mumbled. 

    Muraki arched an elegant eyebrow. Tsuzuki turning down food was not what he would have expected. "Still, you're pale. Why don't we find a place to sit down for some time and perhaps then you'll feel like eating." Without waiting for a reply, he steered Tsuzuki into a small cafe and sat him down. 

    Tsuzuki allowed himself to be steered, and even let Muraki order some tea for him. His fingers kept tracing over the scar on his wrist, over and over again. 

    Muraki noted this, but said nothing about it. From what he was slowly gathering, Tsuzuki's memory of his life was untouched. But the memory of his afterlife seemed to be gone entirely. He smiled slightly. There were quite a few interesting things he would be able to do with this. 

    "All right," he said, as Tsuzuki sipped his tea. He spread his hands out on the table. "What would you like to ask me? Far easier for you to ask questions than for me to try to explain everything." 

    Tsuzuki hesitated. "Am I . . . dead?" 

    "Technically," Muraki said, "yes. You are." 

    Tsuzuki wilted. "Am I in Hell?" he whispered. 

    Muraki raised an eyebrow at him again. "No," he said. "You're in Aomori. I'm presuming that you were here on business. It seems to be coincidence that we ran into each other." That wasn't precisely true, but Muraki didn't think that mentioning the fact that he was damn near Tsuzuki's stalker would really help. 

    "I don't live here?" Tsuzuki asked, glancing around. 

    After a pause, Muraki decided not to correct his terminology. Tsuzuki didn't technically 'live' anywhere. "No. And neither do I. I've been living in Kyoto recently." Time to start the lying that would set everything up nicely. "And so have you." 

    "Oh." Tsuzuki fell silent. He stared into his tea mug for a long minute before asking, "If I'm dead, why am I here?" 

    Muraki chose his words very carefully. "According to some of what you had told me, certain people after death become . . . supernatural guardians, for lack of a better term. They're called Shinigami. They regulate the deaths of other people." 

    "Figures that I would wind up doing that," Tsuzuki mumbled, studying his fingernails. 

    Muraki chose not to comment. There was only so much information he could get in one conversation, he was sure of that. "I had never met your employers," he added. "But it might be best to travel to Kyoto, to see if we could figure out why you had traveled to Aomori. You might have left notes in your house." It would also get Tsuzuki out from underneath the watchful eye of any of the Shinigami who knew where he was. Muraki made a mental note to call Oriya and ask him for a few favors before they left. 

    "But . . . wouldn't I have had notes here or something?" Tsuzuki asked, looking around, obviously confused. "I'm not sure we should leave if there was a reason I was here." 

    "Tsuzuki-san," Muraki said, patiently, "do you remember where you were staying?" 

    "No," Tsuzuki said, drooping. 

    "Then perhaps Kyoto would be the answer after all," Muraki said. 

    "Ne . . . there was a boy with me. Well, a young man," Tsuzuki corrected hastily, feeling a slight blush color his cheeks. "Named Kurosaki . . . brown hair, and the most amazing green eyes . . ." 

    Muraki tried to damp down the waves of jealousy that usually assaulted him when Tsuzuki talked about Hisoka. Someday he was going to wipe all memory of that boy from Tsuzuki's mind. Of course . . . it seemed to have already been done for him. He smiled again. "Oh? I don't know any boy by that name. Where did he go?" 

    "I lost him in the crowd," Tsuzuki said, shivering slightly. He had barely touched his cup of tea. "I guess I panicked a little." 

    "Completely understandable," Muraki said smoothly. He finished his tea and stood up. "Why don't you drink the rest of your tea? I'll call the train station and reserve us two tickets to Kyoto. If that's all right with you, that is?" 

    There was a pause, then Tsuzuki nodded. "Yes. Thank you." He blushed suddenly. "I don't have any money . . ." 

    Muraki smiled and leaned down and kissed Tsuzuki's forehead, and was quite gratified when the other man neither flinched nor pulled away. "I'll be right back," he said, and headed for the street outside the restaurant. It paid to be technological, he mused, as he pulled out his cell phone. 

    He called the train station first and learned that the next train for Kyoto left in forty-five minutes. Plenty of time. He reserved two tickets and dialed Oriya's number. 

    "Ko Kaku Rou," a chirpy voice stated. 

    "Muraki desu. Is Oriya there?" 

    "Hold on a moment, please!" 

    Muraki waited until Oriya's familiar voice picked up. "So you don't call me for three weeks, and now you think you can just waltz back into my life? I thought you were dead, you bastard. And I bet you want a favor, too. Don't you want a favor?" 

    Muraki smiled. "I love you too, Oriya." 

    "Don't give me your bullshit," Oriya snapped. "I thought you were dead. Where the hell have you been?" 

    "Recuperating," Muraki said casually. There was no reason to tell Oriya that he'd been stabbed in the stomach and then nearly burned to death by a large snake Shikigami. That probably wouldn't help matters. Of course, now Oriya was swearing a blue streak at him, so perhaps his enigmatic answer hadn't been the right one either. "I'll be in Kyoto tonight," he added, cutting Oriya off effectively. 

    There was a pause. "You will?" 

    "Yes." 

    "Really?" 

    "Yes." 

    "All right. I'll finish yelling at you once you're here." 

    Muraki smiled. "That's fine." 

    "Now what's the favor that you want? Don't lie and say there isn't one. I know you too well." 

    Muraki cleared his throat. "For one thing, I'll need a room, but I'm sure you expected that." Nor would Oriya let him stay anywhere else, if he was going to be in the area. "You're also going to be playing landlord to a friend of mine. He has no memory, and I'd like you to pretend you recognize him. It'll make things . . . easier." 

    "A friend." Oriya's voice was heavy with suspicion. "Does this friend need a furnished room?" 

    "Yes, but nothing too special. Some clothes would be appreciated. Maybe some books. It's not that important, as long as it looks like he was living there." 

    "I run a brothel, Muraki, not a hotel." 

    "He doesn't need to know that." 

    Oriya's eyes narrowed. Muraki could practically hear it over the phone, and a slight smile tugged at his lips. In a way, he couldn't wait until Oriya saw his 'guest'. Oriya wasn't often caught off-guard, and Muraki was fairly sure that this was going to catch him flat-footed. The lecture he would receive would be worth every minute just for the look on Oriya's face. 

    "This . . . 'friend' of yours . . ." Oriya said slowly. "He has no memory. Should I take that to mean that you weren't on the best of terms and you don't want him to realize that?" 

    Muraki chuckled. "Oriya, you read me like a book. I'll see you tonight." 

    He hung up the phone before Oriya could protest (which he almost certainly would have) and walked back into the restaurant. Tsuzuki was still sitting at the table. The tea mug was empty, and tears were slowly sliding down his cheeks. 

    "Tsuzuki-san?" Muraki asked. "Are you all right?" 

    Tsuzuki laughed shakily. "I'm fine . . . just started thinking again . . . guess it wasn't a good idea." 

    Muraki leaned down and gently thumbed away the tears. Then he put his fingers underneath Tsuzuki's chin and tipped it up so Tsuzuki had to look at him. "Everything is going to be fine, Tsuzuki-san. Believe me." 

    Tsuzuki managed a trembling smile. "I believe you . . . Muraki." 

~~~~ 

    The train pulled to a halt in Kanagawa, and Hisoka was surprised to realize that he had dozed off. He stood up and made his way off the train, pushing his hair out of his face. It was further south here, and warmer. 

    He looked around the train station and smiled slightly. He had only been there a few times, in his younger childhood, but he still remembered it. After a few minutes, he started to make his way through the crowded station. It was early evening, and there were a lot of other people there. 

    As he finally got to the front steps, someone hurrying to catch a train pushed past him, and he fell heavily onto the concrete. Swearing viciously at his stinging palms, he got back up, and then stared. 

    He had skinned both knees and lost some skin off his hands, but as he watched, it was as if he'd never fallen. If it weren't for the new hole in one pant leg, he might have thought he had imagined it. 

    Shivering, he continued to sit on the steps of the train station. He was suddenly unbearably cold. 

    He was dead. He had to be dead, because living people didn't heal wounds. Of course, he wasn't aware that dead people walked around or took trains or slept, and as he sat there, he realized that he was hungry. How could he be hungry? What was going on? 

    There was a reason for all of this. And if he thought about it long enough, he would figure it out. 

    After about a half hour, when no answers had presented themselves, he decided that he was hungry enough that, dead or not, he wanted to get something to eat. There was still a small amount of money in his wallet, so he stopped at a fast food place and ate while sitting on a bench. 

    It was a warm, breezy night, and he was perfectly comfortable in his long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans. He finished his food and began to walk. 

    Night fell while he was out, and he found himself in a lightly wooded park near his house. He smiled, but there was a slight feeling of unease in his stomach. Something about this park was familiar. 

    _(he could almost hear the screaming)_

    Everything looked the same as that night. The same as it always had. 

    _(he could definitely remember running)_

    The wind rustled the trees, and he shivered despite the fact that the air was warm, wrapping his arms around himself and hugging them to his chest. 

    _(he could vividly remember being grabbed from behind and knocked to the ground and everything that had followed, the pain, oh God the pain and the blood and everything red in his vision and his kimono being torn off and why didn't Tsuzuki realize that was why he hated to wear kimonos? and the pain and everything fading fading and then gone and he screamed and screamed and screamed)_

    Hisoka whimpered and ran, leaving the field and all the memories behind. 

    After a while, he ran out of breath, and started walking again. The temperature was dropping as it got later. He reached the house where he had grown up and sat down outside, looking up at the warm glow from within. From the outside, everything in their family looked perfect. 

    Only the people inside knew better. 

    Hisoka took a deep breath, then went up to the front and rang the bell. 

~~~~ 

    "It's no good," Tatsumi said impatiently. "I don't think they're in Aomori anymore. Between the two of us and the Gushoshin, we've seen every square inch of this city more than once. It's not Tokyo, for crying out loud. They aren't here." 

    Watari pushed his hair out of his face, some of the strands coming out of the ponytail. "All right, so they're not in Aomori. But where would they go without telling us? It doesn't make any sense." 

    "No, it doesn't." Tatsumi took his glasses off and polished them meticulously. "Maybe the spirit has moved, and they followed it, but . . . I don't think so." 

    "What would have happened if this thing had tried to . . . you know, suck their souls or whatever?" Watari asked. 

    "Presumably, they'd have no memories right now," Tatsumi said. "Which means that logic dictates they would go to a hospital or something. That's what most reasonable people would do. Tsuzuki-san might not be reasonable, but Kurosaki-kun is. But that's not where they are." 

    Watari began to pace around the bench Tatsumi was sitting on. "This spell . . . steals their souls . . . but it starts with the memory and works backwards. So in theory . . . what if it hit the barrier of their transition from life to death and short circuited?" 

    "Leaving them with . . ." 

    "The memory of their lives only," Watari said. "That's the only explanation I can think of for why they might have left town." 

    "But where would they go?" Tatsumi asked. 

    "I know where Bon would go," Watari said grimly. 

    Tatsumi's eyes widened slightly. "Home. He would go home. But what about Tsuzuki-san?" 

    "I don't know," Watari said. "He never talks about his life. I mean, we can all assume that it was pretty bad, but we don't know where it was pretty bad. He could be anywhere in Japan . . . but he also might have gone with Bon. I'd say that's where we start first. If nothing else, if we can find Bon and Tsuzuki isn't with him, he might be able to tell us where he went." 

    Tatsumi nodded. "Go ahead. I'll catch up with you. I want to stop by at the office and check on Muraki." 

    "All right. I'll meet you in Kanagawa." 

~~~~ 

    Oriya's eyes just about fell out of his head when Muraki showed up on his doorstep with Tsuzuki. However, he maintained his composure admirably, only giving Muraki a look that said he was going to have a lot of explaining to do as soon as Oriya got him alone. 

    Muraki had no plans on that happening any time soon. Not so much because he didn't want to get yelled at, but more because he had business to attend to. He had Oriya show them the room he had prepared and was pleased to note what a good job Oriya had done of it, even adding a few personal touches. He made a mental note to find a nice way to thank him. 

    "There's nothing here to say why I was in Aomori," Tsuzuki said. His voice was hollow, numb. 

    Muraki was slightly worried about him. Although he knew Tsuzuki's mental state just before his death, and he supposed that he should be happy that he hadn't tried to kill himself yet. Or gone catatonic. Or any number of other things that he had expected. He had spent most of the train ride talking to him in a gentle voice, hoping to keep him calm. 

    "We'll figure it out," he said. "For now, you should eat something." 

    "Thank you," Tsuzuki whispered. 

    Muraki smiled. "For what?" 

    "For taking care of me . . ." Tsuzuki shook his head. "Everything's all messed up and fuzzy . . . there's so much that I don't remember just from my life, and . . . thank you, that's all. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't come." 

    "You shouldn't think such things, Tsuzuki-san," Muraki said, reaching out one hand to caress the side of Tsuzuki's face, leaning closer. 

    Tsuzuki closed his eyes at the first touch of his lips. 

    "Were we . . .?" Tsuzuki's question trailed off as Muraki started to guide him backwards, towards the bed. 

    "Does it matter?" Muraki asked, kissing him gently. "We are now. Sometimes, Tsuzuki-san, the past is unimportant." 

    Tsuzuki's eyes stayed closed. The bed hit the back of his knees, and he sat down. Muraki gently pushed his shoulders until he was lying down on it. He felt like he had lost all his energy, and was living in some strange sort of dream. The only thing that seemed real were those hands on his face, lips pressed against his. 

    It wasn't so much that he wanted Muraki -- he didn't. He wanted anyone. Needed someone. From his earliest memories, he had craved touch and affection. If this man who was apparently his friend was going to provide it, then he would accept it. 

    "You shouldn't," he heard himself whisper. 

    Muraki arched an eyebrow at him. "Why not?" he asked, his fingers slowly unknotting Tsuzuki's tie. The action sent a shiver down Tsuzuki's spine. 

    "You don't know who I really am . . . what I really am . . ." 

    Muraki laughed, low in the back of his throat. He pulled the tie out of his collar, tugging on it an inch at a time. "Of course I do," he said, tossing the tie aside. "You're not human . . . you think you're a demon and you're probably right. You've been responsible for hundreds of deaths . . . but it doesn't make you any less beautiful." 

    Tsuzuki shuddered. "I don't know how you can say that." 

    "Perhaps we're the same," Muraki suggested. His fingers toyed with the first of Tsuzuki's shirt buttons. "Had you thought of that? Would you turn me away if you knew that?" 

    Tsuzuki thought about it. "No," he finally said. "I'm no better." 

    "Good." Muraki leaned down and kissed him again. Tsuzuki let his lips part underneath the gentle pressure; although he did not kiss back, he allowed Muraki to kiss him quite thoroughly. 

    He did not react as Muraki finished unbuttoning his shirt and pushed it aside. He felt distant, detached, as if he were watching all this happening to someone else. Muraki was pressed up against him, hands sliding over his skin, but it felt to Tsuzuki almost as if he were on another plane of existence entirely. 

    It didn't matter what happened to his body. Nothing really mattered at all. He was dead, but still here. Seemed he couldn't get anything he wanted these days . . . 

    Then Muraki was abruptly yanked backwards off of him, and when Tsuzuki opened his eyes, the entire room seemed filled with shadows. 

~~~~ 

_......wahahaha. XD_


	7. Chapter Six

_Given how little I know about the actual Kurosaki family curse, I pulled quite a bit out of my ass in this chapter. Comes of having never read most of the manga. So, yeah, I was pretty liberal with both fact and characterization. Uh... deal with it? _

I was also liberal with Oriya. But that's just because I love him so much. 

Chapter Six 

    There was a long pause while Hisoka waited. His nerves felt like they were trying to crawl out of his skin. After a few moments, the front door cracked open and a young woman looked at him with a polite lack of curiosity. "Hai?" 

    Hisoka had to swallow hard before speaking. "Is . . . is Kurosaki-san in? I'd like to . . . to speak to him." 

    "Please come in," she said, standing back to admit him. He could tell from her age that she was too young to have worked there when he had still been kept in the cellar. She must have been hired . . . when? After he went to the hospital? After his death? Was he dead after all? 

    He shivered. 

    "I'll see if Kurosaki-san is in," she said. Hisoka knew it was only a nice way of saying that he may or may not get to see his father. "Whom shall I tell him is here to see him?" 

    Hisoka took a deep breath. "Tell him that . . . please just tell him to come." 

    She gave him a confused look, then shrugged and nodded. Obviously, she didn't consider it her business. Hisoka wasn't surprised. Servants at the Kurosaki house were very, very good at turning a blind eye to some of the stranger goings-on. 

    He waited in the front hallway, looking around. Nothing had changed. It really was as if he had just been gone for a few days. Not years in the hospital and certainly not two years of 

    _(being dead)_

    whatever else had followed. 

    Hisoka ran his finger along one of the small, decorative tables. It came away with a layer of dust. He shivered again. Like everything else in this family, something was inherently wrong with the house. Inherently wrong with all of them. Wrong? No, not wrong. Cursed. No one had ever told him, not exactly, but he had known it anyway. 

    "Hisoka." 

    He turned slowly to face his father. 

    "Tousama." He bowed slightly, but he didn't lower his eyes to the floor. He had rarely seen his father as a child, generally dealing with his mother instead. He had vivid memories of him, however; particularly of the blindfold that always covered his eyes. The blindfold that was still there at this moment. 

    "You can't be here," Nagare stated. His voice was calm, but empty. 

    "I know," Hisoka said. "I'm sorry, I . . . I don't know what's happening to me. I just woke up . . . this morning, and I don't remember anything after . . . after the hospital. I didn't know where else to go, so I . . ." 

    "You're dead," Nagare stated, in the same flat voice. 

    Hisoka flinched. 

    "You've been dead for years." 

    "I know," Hisoka said, suddenly desperate to make his father understand. "I know, but I don't know why I'm here, and -- " 

    "Get out." 

    Nagare turned and started to walk away. 

    "Tousama, please," Hisoka said, starting forward. Nagare didn't slow down, so Hisoka grabbed for his clothes and managed to get one sleeve. "Please, wait, just let me explain -- " 

    "Don't touch me!" Nagare rounded on Hisoka furiously and backhanded him across the face. Hisoka went flying from the force of it and hit the wall across the room. "You think you can come back here and ask me for help after what you did?" 

    "What I did?" Hisoka raised himself up onto his hands and knees. "Please, I don't understand -- " 

    "You left us," Nagare snarled. "This curse should have passed onto you when you came of age at fifteen, but it didn't. It didn't because you'd already been cursed with something else. I could have been free years ago. Free from this hell that I've been living in ever since I turned fifteen myself. It should have been you!" 

    "But . . ." Hisoka scrambled to his feet and was knocked down again just as quickly with a hard punch across the face. 

    "And then you had the nerve to die," Nagare said. "You just died and now I have to try to have another child. You were too good for this family, is that what you think? You have to inflict the curse on another innocent child because you were too good for it?" 

    "You think this was easy on me?" Hisoka yelled, finally getting back up. "You think for one second that the three years of torture I went through in the hospital was easy? You think that . . . that what he did to me . . ." 

    He stopped speaking abruptly. He? There wasn't any he. He had died of a disease. Hadn't he? 

    _(You're so beautiful . . . far too beautiful to just kill . . . but believe me, I will enjoy watching you die)_

    His thoughts were abruptly cut off as his father hit him again. The pain from the first two blows had already faded, the bruises vanished. This time, he stumbled and hit the wall face first, landing on the floor hard enough to knock the wind out of himself. "You have no idea what this curse is," Nagare said coldly. "You have no idea what any of us have gone through for the safety of this village. Don't pretend to be so high and mighty just because of what happened to you." 

    "Oh, yeah," Hisoka said, gasping for breath. "Just dying, that's not a big thing at all." 

    Nagare reached around the back of his head and undid the blindfold. Hisoka found himself staring up at his father's eyes. 

    "There are worse things," Nagare said, "than dying. And living in this family is one of them." 

    Hisoka couldn't manage to look away. 

    "Get out," Nagare said. "I don't know why you're here and I don't care. You abandoned this family. You could have survived if you had wanted to. Get out and don't ever come back." 

    Hisoka slowly dragged himself to his feet. "I didn't choose to leave this family," he said. "I was taken from it. I was killed. You don't have to believe that, but I don't want to leave here with any misunderstandings. I would have taken the curse for this family, for the sake of this village. I would have taken it for you." 

    He never knew what it was he said that angered his father so much; he only knew that he was suddenly seeing stars as he went flying across the room. But that wasn't what really did it. He was completely overwhelmed by the waves of fury and pain rolling off his father that contact brought. 

    "This is what you ran away from," he heard Nagare say. 

    Then, from a thousand miles away -- 

    "Bon? Bon!" 

    And hands lifting him up, and then he passed out. 

~~~~ 

    Tsuzuki was too surprised, at first, to be embarrassed. But once he realized there was another person in the room -- to be precise, a man in an immaculate suit who had shadows twisting around his fingers -- he felt his cheeks burning with a blush. He had never been caught in quite as intimate a position before. 

    Muraki shrugged the shadows off and laughed. "Ah, the jealous lover enters the scene. Don't worry yourself, Tsuzuki-san . . . I'll take care of this." 

    Tsuzuki managed a frightened nod, pulling his shirt around himself and holding it closed tightly. He didn't want to involve himself in a combat situation; he could all too vividly remember what had happened the last time he had. He would never forget what had happened there. 

    "You won't be taking care of anything," Tatsumi said in a thin voice, ignoring the first comment. "You'll be returning Tsuzuki-san to me, and we'll be leaving." The shadows were practically making the room shake. 

    "Sou?" Muraki asked, amused. He turned to Tsuzuki. "Who would you rather go with, Tsuzuki-san?" 

    Tsuzuki looked between the two of them, perplexed. "I . . ." 

    "Don't be fooled by him, Tsuzuki-san," Tatsumi said. "I know you don't remember me, but you can trust me. You can't trust him. He's a liar and a murderer." 

    Muraki just smiled. "Yes, and I'm sure that bursting in here will -- " His words were cut off as he was forced to jump backwards abruptly as shadows threatened to swallow him from all directions. One managed to hit him, slicing open his shirt and wounding the arm underneath it. Another wrapped around his throat. 

    "Muraki-san!" Tsuzuki said, standing up. 

    Muraki managed, by sheer force of will, to pry the shadow off his throat, but he dropped to his knees, gasping for breath. 

    Tsuzuki moved in between the two. 

    "Get out of the way, Tsuzuki-san," Tatsumi said softly. 

    Tsuzuki looked uncertainly at Muraki, who shook his head. "I'll be fine," he managed to choke out. 

    "Tsuzuki-san," Tatsumi repeated, "please listen to me. That man has lied and deceived you. I don't know what he's told you, but it isn't true. He's tried to kill you on more than one occasion." 

    "Then why would he . . ." The blush flared up again as Tsuzuki thought back to what they'd been doing before Tatsumi's entrance. It couldn't be true. Why would someone who wanted him dead be so completely gentle with him? It didn't make any sense. "No. No, you're lying. He's been . . . he's been kind to me." 

    "Just to make you trust him," Tatsumi said through clenched teeth. 

    "Why?" Tsuzuki asked. 

    "I don't know, but it can't be any good," Tatsumi replied, giving Muraki a death glare. The doctor had just managed to make his way to his feet, but the shadows wrapped around his legs, pulling him down. Muraki still made no attempt to fight back. 

    "Stop it!" Tsuzuki said. "Leave him alone!" 

    The shadows abruptly calmed. 

    "Tsuzuki-san," Tatsumi said, "please get out of the way." 

    "No," Tsuzuki said. "If you want to hurt him, you'll have to go through me." 

    There was a moment of incredulous silence. Muraki smirked at Tatsumi, and nearly got decapitated by a roving shadow. Then the door opened and Oriya looked in. "I don't know what the hell you people are doing," he said irritably, "but if you want to kill each other, go outside. I'm running a business here." 

    They blinked at him. 

    "I mean it, Muraki," he snapped. 

    "All right, all right," Muraki grumbled, getting to his feet. "Besides, I do believe that the fight was over, wasn't it?" He smiled at Tatsumi. 

    Tatsumi gave him a steady look, then nodded shortly. "For now, it appears I have no choice but to leave Tsuzuki-san in your tender care. But I won't be gone for long." He turned and strode briskly out of the room, past Oriya, who was still in the doorway. 

    Tsuzuki suddenly realized his shirt was still half-off. He meeped and dodged behind Muraki now the danger was over. 

    Oriya looked between the two of them with narrowed eyes. "Muraki," he said, his voice steady. "I do believe you have a hell of a lot of explaining to do, and as soon as you'd care to do it, I'll be waiting." He turned and walked out of the room without another word. 

    Muraki smiled and turned to Tsuzuki. "Thank you for protecting me," he said, causing Tsuzuki to blush brightly again. 

    "I . . . I couldn't let him hurt you," Tsuzuki said softly. "I'm so tired of people getting hurt right in front of me. I couldn't do anything . . . like when Ruka-chan . . ." He cut himself off abruptly and gave Muraki a weary smile. "I'm sorry . . . I'm tired. Is it all right if I try to get some sleep?" 

    It wasn't precisely in the plan, but things were going so well that Muraki was inclined towards a good humor. "Of course, Tsuzuki-san. I can imagine that this has been a very long day. I'll see you in the morning?" 

    Tsuzuki nodded, and even smiled when Muraki kissed him softly before leaving the room. 

~~~~ 

    Oriya was standing on the back porch of the Ko Kaku Rou, staring outside. It was a warm summer night, and he was wearing only his kimono, having put away the heavy robe he usually wore in the winter. As he stood, he felt fingers running through his hair, gathering it, playing with it. 

    "I thought we had an agreement," he said to the backyard. "Your fingers stay away from my hair, and my knee avoids your personal regions." 

    Muraki chuckled, and let the last of the strands run through his fingers. Oriya's hair had been a bit of a point of contention between them for many years. He simply loved playing with it, but Oriya . . . didn't. At all. He said it was too intimate an act for just friends. 

    Muraki shrugged. Oriya had been very careful about the boundaries between them ever since they had stopped sleeping together. But that was what made teasing him so much fun. He leaned over Oriya's shoulder, his breath warm against the side of his neck. "You're such a prude, Oriya," he said, his arms sliding around Oriya's waist. 

    It was a game they both knew well, and always played. 

    Almost always. 

    In truth, Muraki was quite impressed with Oriya's self-restraint. He knew that Oriya loved him. Why else would he have put up with him for all these years? Although Muraki never would have admitted it, he found it comforting. Oriya accepted him, for all his flaws, and loved him anyway. 

    Oriya pushed him away before his fingers could finish undoing the obi that held his kimono on. "Your purple-eyed boyfriend turn in early?" he asked, his voice neutral. The underlying question unspoken. 

    _(Are you only coming to me because he won't have you?)_

    "Yes," Muraki said. "He was quite tired from the long day he had." 

    They regarded each other in silence. 

    Oriya poked Muraki in the chest. "Spill it, you bastard. You'd better tell me what's going on before I really do put my knee someplace unpleasant." 

    Muraki laughed. "You need to work on your violent tendencies, Oriya," he said, and then, because Oriya's eyebrow was starting to twitch, he explained the situation. Explained how he had managed to teleport from the lab (a skill that had always made Oriya envious) and get medical attention. Explained how he had just happened to notice that Tsuzuki was in Aomori and go pay a visit. 

    "Why didn't you come back here earlier?" Oriya snapped, when this story was over. 

    Muraki smiled and shrugged. "I said I wouldn't bother you anymore. I meant to keep my word." 

    "Jackass," Oriya muttered. "You think that's all you are to me? A bother? That I would be happier if I never saw you again?" 

    Muraki shrugged again. 

    "And now you just parade back in here because you needed something from me," Oriya said bitterly. "Isn't that always the way it goes." 

    "Oriya," Muraki began. 

    "Oh, shut up," Oriya said, but the words were without anger, the tone fatalistic. He was used to Muraki. God help him if, after all these years, he wasn't. "Just tell me how long you're going to be here this time. You come and go as you please; I know that by now." 

    "I think we'll be leaving tomorrow," Muraki said. 

    "Because those other guys have figured out where you are?" Oriya asked. "Yeah, I'm surprised the green-eyed kid hasn't come to kick your ass by now. Or at least to claim his lost love." 

    Muraki raised an eyebrow at him. 

    "Oh, come on," Oriya said, rolling his eyes. "You can't expect him not to. That kid had it bad. Don't tell me you didn't notice. He got run through. Twice. And just kept getting back up." 

    "He can heal," Muraki informed Oriya in an icy voice. 

    Oriya snorted. "Doesn't mean that getting sliced open is fun." 

    "I suppose not," Muraki replied. "But it doesn't change anything. The boy isn't here . . . so that means that Tsuzuki-san is all mine. And we'll be leaving tomorrow, because I really don't fancy the thought of getting walked in on again." 

    "Big surprise there," Oriya said peaceably. "All right. Tomorrow morning it is. Will you require breakfast before leaving?" 

    Muraki gave him a look. 

    Oriya just looked back, unremorseful. 

    "Sometimes you're really a jerk," Muraki said with a mournful smile. He slid his arm around Oriya's waist again, pulling him close. Their lips met. Then Oriya pushed him away. "You're also a tease." 

    "You're one to talk," Oriya said, pulling his kimono closer around him. 

    Muraki regarded him carefully. "You're more upset with me than usual. I suppose I should apologize for letting you think I was dead? I was only trying to make things easier on you, honestly." 

    "Sometimes I don't think you have an ounce of brains in that pretty little head of yours," Oriya drawled, lighting a cigarette. "For one thing, you were being an idiot. Making me think you were dead did not, in any way, make me any happier or make my life any easier. Secondly, that's not why I'm annoyed with you and you're stupid if you can't figure it out." 

    Muraki smiled. "You don't like that I brought Tsuzuki here." 

    "Give the man a prize," Oriya said, looking disgusted. 

    "I think you're jealous." 

    "Don't make me hit you, you arrogant son of a bitch." 

    Muraki's smile widened. "You are jealous. It's written all over your face. You don't like that I'm involved with someone else." 

    Oriya gave him a withering look. "I could list all the things that I don't like about you bringing Tsuzuki here, but it would take all night and you'd get very bored. Let me just cap the highlights for you. First off, I don't like you bringing another man here. You never have before. Secondly, I don't like the fact that he was terrified of you and you kidnapped him and I can imagine what you did with him then because I know what your idea of fun is. Don't you remember why we stopped sleeping together, Muraki? It's because when you touched me, I kept thinking of the children you'd raped." 

    Muraki stood silently through this tirade. "Are you done?" 

    "No," Oriya snapped. "Thirdly, I don't know why he doesn't have any memory or why he's suddenly decided that you're his lord and savior, but I like that even less. You're taking advantage of him and it's pissing me off." 

    "And fourth and lastly . . ." Muraki moved too quickly for Oriya to anticipate, and had him pinned to the wall in a matter of seconds, pressing their bodies together. "You don't like the fact that I didn't try to crawl into your bed for once, the last time I was here." 

    Oriya tried to get out of Muraki's grasp, and found himself too well pinned. "No," he said. "No, I didn't like that either." 

    "Heh." Muraki let him go. "It amuses me the way you always turn me down so vehemently, yet when I stop trying, you get angry with me." 

    Oriya gave him an annoyed look. "I suppose it was hoping for too much to think that you would understand," he said bitterly. 

    "Tell me, Oriya . . . why does the fact that I'm a murderer make no difference to you, but the fact that I'm a rapist does?" Muraki asked curiously. 

    "Because murder is quick," Oriya spat out. "Because it's over and done with when it happens. But what you've done . . . that lasts for lifetimes, Muraki. Don't you understand the scars you leave? Or is that all part of the fun for you? Is watching the years of pain and suffering and aftermath part of the game?" 

    Muraki smiled. "What would you do if I said yes?" 

    Oriya gave him a long, steady look. "Get out, Muraki. Take your boytoy and get out. Just be gone in the morning." 

    He turned to go upstairs to his room, shutting the door firmly behind him. 

    Muraki smiled slightly and lit a cigarette, looking out across the dew-soaked yard. "And that," he said softly to no one, "is why I knew you'd be better off without me." 

~~~~ 


	8. Chapter Seven

_Warnings for pulled-out-of-ass Tsuzuki backstory! And this time, since I am *blatantly saying I AM MAKING THIS UP* I sure hope no one yells at me for it. -_- Also, uh... thanks to TK for helping me make up said backstory, and D-chan for unknowingly giving me an idea that led to some of this stuff! Which I never told her about, so ha! Now you all know. ^^_

Chapter Seven 

    "Do you think he's going to be okay?" 

    "I think so. It was just his empathy, that's all. I think it got overloaded by the argument he was having." 

    "That bad?" 

    "And how." 

    "I think he's coming around." 

    "Oh, yeah. Good. Bon? Bon, can you hear me?" 

    Hisoka slowly focused on the two men standing above him, one a blonde in a worn turtleneck and jeans, the other in a neat suit with piercing blue eyes. For a second, he thought he felt a vague flicker of recognition, and then it was gone. "Where am I?" he managed. He felt drugged, slow. The world was coming in through a haze. 

    "You're in the Meifu," the blonde said. "The land of the dead. I'm Watari and this is Tatsumi. You know us already, but I'm willing to bet you don't remember that from what Tatsumi's been telling me. How are you feeling?" 

    "Fuzzy," Hisoka answered. He couldn't think of any better way to put that, but he was aware that it made little sense. Would they know about his empathy? How did they know him at all? Were they dead? His head ached and he closed his eyes momentarily. "What happened?" 

    "Ah . . . you got in a pretty spectacular argument with your father," Watari said, busying himself checking Hisoka's pulse. It made Hisoka want to laugh. Dead people had pulses. Who would have thought? 

    "Not then," he said impatiently. "Before. Why don't I have my memory?" 

    Watari and Tatsumi exchanged a look. Now that he was a little more awake, Hisoka noted that the latter was pale and unhappiness and worry were rolling off both of them in waves. He sat up abruptly and the world spun. Watari helped him lie back down again. 

    "What's going on?" he asked sharply. "Just tell me." 

    "You're a Shinigami," Tatsumi said simply. He explained, briefly, the purpose and nature of being a Shinigami while Hisoka listened silently. "You and your partner, Tsuzuki-san, were investigating a case in Aomori. Some sort of spirit was taking other people's life energy -- and with it, their memories. Apparently, you and Tsuzuki-san found it." 

    "Tsuzuki-san." Hisoka frowned. "Where is he? He ran away from me in Aomori. I don't know what happened in his life, but I guess it can't have been good." 

    They exchanged that glance again. "We don't know much about Tsuzuki's life," Watari said regretfully. 

    "Where is he now?" Hisoka asked through clenched teeth. He didn't know why he was so worried, but he couldn't deny the fear that twisted his stomach and tore at his mind. "Why are you looking like that?" 

    "Tsuzuki-san has been . . . taken in by a mutual enemy of ours," Tatsumi finally said, his voice calm and deliberate. "Given that he has no memory of the man, he didn't realize that he was lying." 

    "Is he all right?" Hisoka asked. His throat felt constricted. It was hard to breathe, and yet he still didn't know what he was so afraid of. 

    "He seems fine," Watari assured him. "We just haven't been able to get him back yet. He doesn't know us, see, and since Captain Control here got kinda pissy, now he sees us as a threat." 

    Tatsumi gave Watari a dirty look. "Like you would have reacted any better," he snapped. 

    "What was happening?" Hisoka asked suspiciously. 

    "It's not important," Tatsumi said through clenched teeth. "The important thing is convincing Tsuzuki that we're not a threat and that Muraki is." 

    "Muraki?" Hisoka asked, startled. "Dr. Muraki Kazutaka?" 

    They both stared at him. "I thought you didn't have your memory," Watari said slowly. 

    "He was my doctor," Hisoka said. "But you know, it's strange. I don't remember much about him, even though I'm pretty sure he must have come to see me at least every week or so." 

    Tatsumi and Watari exchanged glances again. 

    "What's going on?" Hisoka asked in a thin voice. 

    "It would take too long to explain," Watari said, trying to think this through. "The important thing right now is to get Tsuzuki back and then see what we can do about your memories. We have to catch this spirit and figure out how it does what it does, and how to reverse it. We may not have much time. The other people it attacked died after four days. I don't think that would happen to you, because, you know, already dead. But still, it doesn't seem like a good idea to wait." 

    "So let's go get Tsuzuki back," Hisoka said, trying to get up. The world spun a little, but not as badly. "How long have I been unconscious?" 

    "Quite a while," Watari said. "It's nearly dawn." 

    "We should get to Kyoto before Muraki and Tsuzuki leave," Tatsumi said. He gave Hisoka a long, steady look. "Are you up to travelling? If anyone can get through to Tsuzuki, it's going to be you." 

    "I'm fine," Hisoka said. He sat up and managed to stay upright. The world faded in and out. "Just . . . give me a minute to steady myself." 

    "We'll get you some tea," Watari said, and tactfully left the room. Tatsumi followed him. As soon as they were out of the infirmary, Watari sagged against the wall. "I never even thought of that," he said softly. "That Muraki would have been his doctor all that time . . . God only knows what the man was doing to him." 

    "We can probably wager a guess," Tatsumi said grimly. "But it makes sense. Where would the fun be if he didn't get to watch what happened?" 

    Watari shuddered. "Let's not think about it." 

    "But he didn't recognize Muraki when they first met again," Tatsumi said. "When he first became a Shinigami. He didn't know Muraki then. Why does he remember him now?" 

    "Because the memory spell was lifted by Muraki in Nagasaki," Watari said. "Let's take this chronologically. Muraki was evil. Muraki blocked Hisoka's memories of his evilness. Hisoka died. He met Muraki again. The block on his memories was released. Now all his memories of his afterlife are gone -- but the block is still gone, even though he doesn't remember it being removed." 

    Tatsumi put two fingers to his temple. "This is getting complicated. What do you think when he sees Muraki again? Obviously, he isn't connecting the name now with what happened to him. But when he sees him . . ." 

    "I don't know," Watari said. "I just don't know." 

    Hisoka emerged from the infirmary. He still looked shaky, but determined. "All right, let's go," he said. 

    There was a pause, then Tatsumi nodded, and then went. 

~~~~ 

    _// "This way, get him!" _

    Tsuzuki ran down the alley, his heart thudding painfully in his chest, his breath raw in his throat. He had been running for what felt like forever, his hand clenching down on Ruka's as he dragged her along behind her. What had he done this time? Why did they hate him? Why would they never just leave him alone? 

    "Over here, Tsuzuki," Ruka gasped out, her hand sliding out of his as she darted down a narrow alley. Tsuzuki nearly stumbled, then managed to regain his balance and join her. The two of them ran top speed to the end of the small street. 

    "Oh, no," Tsuzuki gasped out, seeing the accident where a cart had overturned, spilling several barrels of tofu into the road. He had enough time to swerve, but Ruka tripped and went flying. "Ruka-chan!" He skidded around and started to help her up. 

    "There they are!" 

    Ruka gave a little half-scream as Tsuzuki dragged her to her feet. Before they could start running again, they were surrounded. 

    "What do we do?" she whispered, clinging to the front of his shirt. 

    "Leave us alone!" Tsuzuki tried, appealing to the mob that had surrounded them. There was some mocking, derisive laughter. Then the first stone flew, then the second. It glanced off his cheekbone, bouncing away to lie harmlessly on the ground. Tsuzuki's cheek stung and his eye filled with tears involuntarily. Ruka cried out as another rock hit her in the shoulder. 

    "Stop it!" Tsuzuki said. "Stop it, let her go! Do what you want to me but let Ruka-chan go!" 

    Only laughter answered him. // 

    "Tsuzuki-san?" 

    Tsuzuki sat bolt upright, his hands clenching down involuntarily. His breathing was fast and much too harsh. He realized slowly that his hands were practically embedded in Muraki's upper arms. His eyes felt too large for his head, wide and frantic. 

    "Were you dreaming?" Muraki asked, sitting down on the edge of the bed. 

    "I . . ." Tsuzuki's voice trailed off. 

    "It's all right," Muraki said. "You don't have to tell me. It's past dawn. We should be getting up if we want to eat before we catch the early train back to Aomori. Hopefully there we can figure out how you lost your memory and do something about it, ne?" Privately, Muraki's plans were slightly different from this, but that was nothing that Tsuzuki needed to know. 

    Tsuzuki nodded. "Hai . . . I'll get dressed." 

    Muraki gave him an admiring look, given that he was only wearing a plain white T-shirt that had been underneath the button down. "I'll see you downstairs soon." 

    "Okay," Tsuzuki whispered. When Muraki had left the room, closing the door behind him, he crawled out of bed. Ruka's screams were still ringing in his ears. He looked through the drawers and found some new clothes. His suit from the day before was dirty and wrinkled, but somehow the new clothes didn't seem . . . well, like his. 

    He shrugged off these thoughts and pulled on a pair of jeans and a maroon sweater. They were both a little too big, but the bagginess was somewhat nice. He ran the brush through his hair quickly and checked in the mirror and was pleased to note that he looked all right. 

    He opened the window and looked outside. Everything was coated in a thick layer of fog, since it was still very early. But the air was already warm, and he took in a few deep breaths, trying to rid himself of the memories. 

    After he felt somewhat more centered, he turned around and went downstairs. 

    Muraki was waiting, and there was some breakfast on the table. Tsuzuki felt queasy when he looked at it, but he couldn't deny that he was hungry. He sat down and picked up the tea, staring into it. 

    "You should eat," Muraki said, his voice concerned. "You didn't at all yesterday." 

    "I know," Tsuzuki said, then with a muttered 'itadakimasu', he began to choke down the food. It wasn't that the food was bad, it was just that he didn't particularly feel like eating it. 

    There was a knock on the door, then it opened before either of them could answer. Oriya walked in with a pot of tea. He glared briefly at Muraki before setting it down on the table. "How are you feeling this morning, Tsuzuki-san?" he asked in a neutral tone of voice. 

    "Better, I guess," Tsuzuki murmured, shoving his food around on his plate. 

    "Good," Oriya said. "Because there's someone that wants to see you." He turned slightly to the doorway, and Hisoka poked his head in. "You can come in," he said. 

    Muraki gave Oriya an incredulous look, following by a thunderous glare. 

    "Tsuzuki?" Hisoka asked hesitantly. 

    Tsuzuki blinked at him owlishly. "Oh . . . Hisoka. What are you doing here?" 

    "Looking for you," Hisoka said impatiently. "You ran off in Aomori and I . . . I was worried. It's -- " His voice cut off abruptly as he looked in Muraki's direction. The world blurred, paled, went grainy. He found himself gasping for breath. 

    "Are you okay?" Tsuzuki asked worriedly, pushing back from the table. 

    Hisoka grabbed for the support and Tsuzuki caught him. His hands clenched down on Tsuzuki's forearms. 

    Muraki couldn't help but smile. "I see you remember me, boy," he said, and was all too aware of Oriya's eyes on him, watching him closely. He knew he was going to be judged by how he responded to Hisoka's reaction to him. 

    After a few seconds, Hisoka managed to catch his breath. He let go of Tsuzuki's arms and straightened up. "You . . ." he breathed out, and the single word contained enough anger and hatred to stop a charging lion. 

    Tsuzuki looked between the two of them in confusion. "What's going on?" he asked, his voice small and vulnerable. "Is something wrong?" 

    "Nothing's wrong," Muraki assured him, and kissed his forehead lightly. "Don't worry about anything. I'll take care of this." 

    "You'll take care of this?" Hisoka asked, and laughed harshly. "The same way you took care of me, maybe? Because you did a great job at that. Oh, you took care of me all right." 

    "What's he talking about?" Tsuzuki asked, and his voice was a little firmer, a little more demanding. 

    "Don't worry -- " Muraki begin, but Tsuzuki cut him off. 

    "No, I'm worried. I want to know." He turned and looked at Hisoka. "If he won't tell me, you tell me. What are you talking about?" 

    "He killed me," Hisoka said flatly. "You were right. We're dead. And now I remember why. He cursed me and after three years of . . ." His voice trailed off. He knew instinctively, from the looks on Watari and Tatsumi's faces that morning, that he had not told anyone what Muraki had been doing to him. "Three years of being sick, I died. Why the hell are you here?" 

    "He's been helping me," Tsuzuki said weakly. 

    "I'm sure he has," Hisoka said bitterly. "Look, I don't know what happened last night, but that guy with the glasses asked me if I could come get you. It's all one big mistunderstanding -- we're your friends, and this guy isn't. He's evil. Can't you feel it?" 

    "He's not . . ." Tsuzuki's voice faltered and he looked uncertainly at Muraki. "He's been very kind to me . . ." 

    "Oh, yeah?" Hisoka asked. "Probably because he wants something from you. Right, Muraki?" His gaze shifted from his partner to Muraki, and his eyes narrowed. "That's it, we're leaving." 

    "Wait," Tsuzuki said, pressing one hand against his temple. "I don't understand." He turned to Muraki. "Please, tell me what's going on. You . . . you can't be evil." Back to Hisoka. "If he's evil, why would he have been kind to me?" 

    "Because he wants you, kiddo." 

    Everyone turned to look at Oriya. 

    He laughed, particularly at the look on Muraki's face. "Don't deny it, I've been seeing the way he's looked at you ever since he got here. But your friend here is right. Muraki killed him. So you may want to put some thought into what you do next." 

    Tsuzuki blinked at Muraki, a wounded look on his face. 

    "Let's go," Hisoka said, and his hand closed on Tsuzuki's wrist. Tsuzuki allowed the smaller boy to tow him out of the room, then out of the restaurant altogether. 

    Muraki looked at Oriya through narrowed eyes. "Why did you do that?" he asked. 

    Oriya grinned. "Because someone needed to," he said, and then left the room without another word. 

~~~~ 

    "What's going on?" Tsuzuki asked in a small voice, once they were outside. Now that they were safely away from Muraki, Hisoka had begun to tremble. It was nothing big; just fine termors that made his entire body shake. He was rubbing his hands up and down his arms as if he were cold. "Where are we going?" 

    "To meet some friends," Hisoka said shortly. Tatsumi and Watari had agreed to wait at a small cafe two blocks away, under the circumstances that Hisoka would not press the issue if it looked like it might come down to a fight. 

    "Did that man really kill you?" Tsuzuki couldn't help but ask. 

    "Yes," Hisoka said. "Look, there's a lot I really don't understand yet, but the others can explain it to me. We can trust them. I can feel it." 

    "Okay," Tsuzuki said, feeling numb. 

    Hisoka stopped dead and turned to look at him. "What the hell did you run away from me for, you stupid idiot?" 

    Tsuzuki blinked at him, then managed a wan smile. "I . . . I didn't know what to do. Everything I could remember was just . . . swallowing me up." 

    Hisoka sighed and began to walk again, at a more sedate pace, letting Tsuzuki follow under his own steam rather than dragging him. "I know," he said with a sigh. "Bad things happened to both of us, I know. But Muraki . . . he's not who you thought he was." 

    "He protected me," Tsuzuki said softly. "He was kind to me." 

    Hisoka opened his mouth to say any number of things that Muraki had done to him, but he realized that the comments would probably do more harm than good. So with a sigh, he kept his silence. The rest of the walk passed without a word being spoken. Tatsumi and Watari were sitting on a bench outside the cafe, which wasn't open yet. It was still too early, barely seven o'clock. 

    Tsuzuki meeped when he saw Tatsumi, but didn't run away. He merely gave the man a suspicious look. 

    "I'm sorry for frightening you last night," Tatsumi said quietly. 

    Tsuzuki's wan smile reappeared. "That's all right," he said. "If . . . If Muraki is like what Hisoka says, then I guess I understand why you wanted to get me away from him so badly. But . . . should I know you? Everything's all mixed up in my head." 

    Tatsumi and Watari introduced themselves, then Watari took it upon himself to explain the situation. It was not so much because he knew more details, although he did about the case specifically, but more because he was less threatening than Tatsumi and Tsuzuki was liable to take the news better. 

    "So," he concluded, "we have to go back to Aomori and figure out what was going on. Hopefully you two left notes or something on how you found that thing and we can find it. I don't think you can lose your memories twice." This statement was delivered with a wink, and was meant to be reassuring, but both Hisoka and Tsuzuki looked profoundly nervous. 

    Watari sighed. "But first, I want to ask you two a few questions, to see if the spell really did short-circuit or if it's still at work." 

    "Okay," Tsuzuki said uncertainly. 

    "Your loss of memory is total? From the moment of your death?" 

    Tsuzuki nodded. Hisoka opened his mouth, shut it, and also nodded. 

    "Bon, you looked uncertain. Why?" 

    "Because . . . parts before my death were missing too," he mumbled. "But seeing Muraki brought them back, so never mind." 

    "Ah." Watari considered. Other victims had lost their personalities, but that certainly hadn't happened in this case. Tsuzuki was just as traumatized as he'd been when he'd first become a Shinigami. Not that Watari had been present for it, but the shadows of it could still be seen -- and definitely were after they brought him back from Kyoto. Hisoka seemed the same as always, if a bit quieter, and that was probably due to his discomfort with the situation. 

    Tatsumi gave him a questioning look, and he realized his thoughts had gotten sidetracked. "Ah, gomen," he said. "What about your energy? Are you feeling sick? Tired? More tired than usual, I mean." 

    Hisoka shook his head. Tsuzuki said, "Well, I didn't get much sleep, but other than that I'm all right." 

    "Good." Watari turned to Tatsumi. "I really think it must have just short-circuited. That's the only explanation I can come up with for it. Which is both good and bad. It's good in that we don't have to worry about any more of a time limit than we already had. But if there's no bond between them and it, we're going to have a hell of a time finding it again." 

    Tatsumi sighed. "Perfect," he said, and pushed his glasses up on his nose. 

    "What time limit?" Hisoka asked suspiciously. Watari had not mentioned this in his synopsis of the case. 

    "Ah, well," he said, "this thing only kills a certain number of people before going dormant again. We've still got about two weeks, so don't worry about it too much." That was if this sudden, unexpected turn of events hadn't sent it into dormancy early. Watari thought it was best to not mention that. 

    "And what happens if we don't catch it by then?" Tsuzuki asked, suddenly wide-eyed. "Are we going to be without our memories forever?" 

    Watari coughed. "We'll figure something out," he assured the panicking Shinigami. "We always do. Anyway, so, it's back to Aomori we go. You can transport instantly. Ah -- you do remember how to teleport, right? I think it might be a bad idea to try if you don't remember . . ." 

    Tatsumi cleared his throat. "I'll be going back to the office, Watari-san," he said. 

    Watari blinked at him, then nodded. It was clear that Tatsumi's presence was making Tsuzuki uncomfortable after the fight they'd nearly had. In any case, the Shokan Department would practically cease to function without Tatsumi; he couldn't spend the day on a wild goose chase of any sort. "All righty," he said. "I'll check in tonight." 

    "You'd better," Tatsumi said, before disappearing, and Watari thought he saw honest concern -- not only for Tsuzuki, but for himself and Hisoka as well -- in his normally cool blue eyes. 

    "Aomori then?" Hisoka asked, glancing at Tsuzuki. There was an expression of slight worry on his face, but Watari was unsure of exactly why. 

    "Aomori," he said with a decisive nod. "I have the address of your hotel -- it was in the financial records, since Tatsumi got the reservations and everything. We can start there. Tsuzuki?" 

    Tsuzuki jumped slightly, jerked out of his thoughts. "Aa," he said sheepishly. "I'm listening." 

    Hisoka rolled his eyes. 

    Watari chose not to comment. "Then let's go." 

~~~~ 


	9. Chapter Eight

_Warnings: Confusion rampant ahead. But trust me, we're all confused together, 'cause I don't know what's going on either. ^^;;_

Chapter Eight 

    Oriya was smoking on the back porch, listening to the gentle sound of the wind chimes, when Muraki finally emerged from his room. The doctor was now fully dressed and had his long white coat on. "You off, then?" Oriya asked, not looking up. 

    "Hai," Muraki said. There was carefully controlled anger in his voice. 

    "Aomori to find your pseudo-boyfriend?" 

    "You know," Muraki said, as if this was just occurring to him, "I wish you wouldn't take your jealousy out on me." 

    Oriya snorted and stood up. For the first time, Muraki noticed that not only was he wearing one of his casual kimonos, not generally meant for running a business, he also had a bag by his feet. "All right," he said. "Aomori it is. Let's go." 

    Muraki blinked at him. "You're not coming," he stated. 

    "Stop me," Oriya said, and smirked. 

    "Oriya," Muraki protested, feeling as though he'd suddenly been caught flat-footed. After a second, he managed to regain some semblance of dignity. "Why on earth do you want to go to Aomori with me? Because if it's to make sure I don't get together with Tsuzuki-san, I doubt you have much to worry about after this morning." 

    "Nah," Oriya said. "I'm just sick of letting you run off without me, that's all. We can have a nice vacation together. It's been a long time since I was up that far north." He grinned suddenly. "And if you don't let me come, I'll just follow you around. How's that?" 

    Muraki scowled at him. "Fine, you can come," he said through clenched teeth. 

    "Good," Oriya said. "That's exactly what I thought you'd say." 

~~~~ 

    "Well, uhm . . ." Watari looked at the papers that were scattered around the hotel room. "This was your room. I guess we should put these in order to try to figure out what you were doing, huh?" He started to gather up the papers. Hisoka and Tsuzuki did the same. For a few minutes, they were silent as they sorted through the stacks. 

    Watari explained to them the details of the case. By the time the morning was over, they had systematically gone through everything that Tsuzuki and Hisoka had gone through before they had lost their memories. 

    "This is stupid," Hisoka grumbled, flopping backwards onto the bed. Tsuzuki said nothing, loosely clasping his hands in his lap. His head was slightly bowed. 

    "We have to keep trying," Watari said, trying to be genki. 

    Hisoka crossed his arms over his chest. "Stop doing that," he snapped at Tsuzuki. "If you're so God damned miserable, go out on the balcony. You're making my head hurt." 

    Tsuzuki's head jerked up, then he sighed slightly. Without another word, he shuffled over to the balcony. 

    Hisoka pressed two fingers to his temple. "Idiot," he muttered. "What the hell did he take me so seriously for?" 

    Watari sighed. "He's got issues," he said. "If you're really worried, go out and talk to him. Try to cheer him up a little. I'm going to go pick us up some lunch. We've been working on this long enough for now." 

    "Okay, okay." Hisoka stood up and went out onto the balcony. Tsuzuki was leaning over the edge, staring vaguely into space. "I'm sorry I snapped," Hisoka said sullenly. "My head aches and I'm having a bad day. Are you all right?" 

    "Mm," Tsuzuki said, not looking over at him. "I'm fine." 

    "You're also a bad liar," Hisoka said, leaning against the railing so he was looking away. It was, had they known it, eerily reminiscent to their conversation in the rain, where they had officially become partners. "And very bad at hiding your misery. Even if I wasn't an empath . . ." 

    "I'm sorry," Tsuzuki said. He started to erect very careful mental barriers, being sure to stop the flow of emotions. 

    Hisoka grit his teeth in annoyance. "That's not what I meant," he said. "I don't want you to just hide it from me. I want you to talk to me." 

    "Why?" Tsuzuki asked, softly, curiously. "You don't even know me." 

    "I guess not," Hisoka said. "But I feel like I do." Though he would sooner die than admit it, he felt a very strong urge to comfort Tsuzuki. It was somewhat akin to the fear that had gotten underneath his skin when Tsuzuki had been in danger. He could not explain it; the best he could do was accept it. 

    "I know," Tsuzuki said with a sigh. "I feel like I know you too. It's strange . . . I don't mean to make you upset, but this is all very . . ." 

    "You're not making me upset," Hisoka snapped, too quickly. "Just don't be such an idiot." He paused, carefully gauging the small amount of emotion he could still feel from Tsuzuki. Even that was rapidly disappearing, like a hole that was being blocked up. Anguish . . . and betrayal. "You're not still on about Muraki, are you?" 

    Tsuzuki flinched. "No," he said. He caught Hisoka's skeptical glance. "Okay, maybe a little. It's just that he was so kind to me . . . it's hard to think of him as being evil. Despite what Watari and Tatsumi said . . ." 

    "Kind to you." Hisoka's voice was disbelieving. 

    "He was," Tsuzuki said defensively. 

    "And you're going to try to convince me that he didn't once try to get into your pants the entire time?" 

    Tsuzuki's vivid blush was answer enough. 

    Hisoka stared into the hotel room, which was now dark and empty. Watari had departed. "He knew you were vulnerable . . . so he tried to get you. That's how he works. That's what he does." 

    Tsuzuki shivered. 

    "I'm surprised he didn't just force you," Hisoka said bitterly. "Unless you just went along with it, that is?" 

    "No!" Tsuzuki protested, turning pink again. "I was tired, so I . . . I turned him away. But he didn't force me! That wouldn't count as having been kind to me, now would it." 

    Hisoka turned away. "So he made you want it, instead. I suppose that's better than what he did to me." 

    There was a long pause. "Ne, 'Soka . . ." Tsuzuki picked up the nickname automatically, making Hisoka's cheeks burn bright pink. "What did he do to you? If you want me to believe he's evil . . . why don't you just tell me?" 

    "Because I'm not sure I can," Hisoka whispered. "I'm not sure I could say it out loud without going insane. Because that might mean having to come to grips with what happened . . . and I don't think I can do that. Maybe that makes me weak. I don't know." 

    "I don't think so," Tsuzuki said quietly. "There's plenty of things that I certainly don't want to talk about." 

    They stood in silence for a few minutes. The rain began, gentle at first, then harder. 

    "Should we go in?" Tsuzuki asked. 

    "Aa," Hisoka said. He turned away and pulled open the balcony door for Tsuzuki. He paused and looked out at the city. "It's out there somewhere," he murmured. "I can feel it . . . pulling on me . . ." 

    _(like a moth to the flame)_

    "What was that?" Tsuzuki asked. 

    Hisoka shook himself. "Nn. It's nothing." 

~~~~ 

    By five o'clock, the three of them were all tired and irritable. They had gone over every possible theory at least twice, and still had made no headway. "It's impossible," Tsuzuki declared. His misery had abated somewhat now that he was confronted with such a complicated problem. "We have no way of finding this thing." 

    "But you found it," Watari said insistently. "There must be a way to find it, because you two already did once." 

    "Maybe it was just coincidence!" Tsuzuki replied. 

    "Maybe it found us," Hisoka said in a low voice, and shuddered. It was hard to think with that consistently quiet buzzing in his ears. Hard to concentrate. "This is stupid." He stood up. "I'm going for a walk." 

    "But it's raining," Watari said, sounding both surprised and concerned. 

    "I'll survive." Hisoka picked up his jacket and pulled it on. "I need to move for a little while. I can't stand being cooped up." That was certainly true; being kept in the cellar all those years had bred that in him quite nicely. "I'll be back in a little while." 

    "You'll be okay?" Tsuzuki asked anxiously. 

    "Baka. I'll be fine." Hisoka stalked out of the room. 

    Tsuzuki picked at the blanket covering the bed. His head ached and his unhappiness was returning quickly now that he had nothing else to occupy him. Watari sighed and took off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose. It was a difficult case -- damn near an impossible one, and one that he might have been tempted to give up on completely if it weren't for this new development. If Tsuzuki and Hisoka wanted their memories back, they had to find wherever this thing had gone. 

    But the more Watari thought about it, the more convinced he became that Hisoka was right. They had not gone out and found it. It had come to them, or at least brought them to it. 

    It made perfect sense, after all. Tatsumi had said it just the day before. 

    _// What do you think would happen if this . . . whatever it is . . . discovered that Shinigami were after it? // _

    What would happen? 

    Either it would run, afraid -- which it obviously hadn't -- or it would want to get them out of the way. And want to get its hands on their psychic energy. Two birds with one stone. 

    Hisoka was right. This thing had drawn them in and effectively disabled them. And as much as Watari didn't want to admit it, he still had no proof that the spell was no longer in effect. Maybe it was draining their energy more slowly. Maybe it would take a few days before they noticed. 

    Maybe maybe maybe. 

    All the maybes added up to the fact that he still had absolutely no idea what to do. 

    "Ne, Watari . . .?" 

    Watari turned to him, forcing a smile. Now Tsuzuki was going to ask him what they were going to do, and he would have to try to come up with some sort of reassuring answer. That or terrify him, but the purple-eyed Shinigami was unstable enough without adding that problem. "Aa?" 

    Tsuzuki asked nothing of the sort. "Hisoka and I . . . were we just partners?" 

    Watari blinked at him. "I beg your pardon?" he asked. 

    Tsuzuki stared down at his wrists. Stared at his watch band as if he could see the scars underneath it. "I was just wondering . . . I don't remember him, but I feel like I do. It's strange . . ." He laughed a little. "But he agrees with me. He said that when I was with Muraki, he was frightened without knowing why. And he was trying to comfort me earlier." 

    Watari waited for the rest of it. 

    "And I suppose I feel the same way," Tsuzuki finally said. "I know he's upset, and I . . . I want to go find him and make sure he's all right. I don't really know why . . . I just do. So I was wondering . . . what we were to each other. I know we must have been friends, but . . . was it more than that?" 

    Watari considered his answer very carefully. His immediate, and not very intelligent, impulse was to lie. To tell Tsuzuki that yes, they had been more. He knew damn well that they wanted to be, but he also was suspicious of whether or not either of them would ever get up the courage. 

    Or he could say that they weren't, and perhaps Tsuzuki would forget about the whole thing. He might never look at Hisoka as anything more than his younger friend -- and Watari knew that it would make Hisoka miserable. 

    The problem was really that he could not answer. He didn't know the answer, not for sure. He only knew what he had observed. And no one knew what had taken place in the burning building -- no one but the two of them and Tatsumi, and Tatsumi wasn't talking. 

    "I don't know," he finally said. 

    Tsuzuki, who had been expecting a good answer after Watari's full minute of silent contemplation, wilted. "You don't?" 

    Watari shrugged a little. "You and Bon are both very private people. I don't know for sure what was between you. Nobody did. I can tell you the little I know, if you think that'd help." 

    Tsuzuki nodded, eager for the information. 

    "I know that the two of you cared for each other very deeply," Watari said, turning to shuffle through some papers so Tsuzuki wouldn't be able to read anything from his face. "I know that you're the first person who ever showed any affection for him, and as such his loyalty to you was completely unbreakable. You saved his life -- well, afterlife." Watari laughed. "But you did more than that. You convinced him that it was worth something." 

    Tsuzuki sat silently, fingers tracing over his watch. "And?" he finally asked, when it didn't appear that Watari was going to say anything else. 

    And he loves you, Watari added silently. Deeply. Devotedly. Unconditionally. 

    "And just before all this mess, he saved your life too," Watari said. "But not by rescuing you from someone else. He saved you from yourself. You wanted to die." He delivered this statement without a trace of emotion. Tsuzuki looked down. "But he convinced you not to. I don't know how. No one does." 

    Tsuzuki nodded a little. "Anything else?" he asked quietly. 

    Watari thought he knew the rest. Hisoka loved Tsuzuki beyond any shadow of a doubt, but Tsuzuki wouldn't let him in. Too caught up in his own misery, his own lack of self-worth, his own belief that he had nothing to offer Hisoka, he would always keep his partner at arm's length. No matter how much Hisoka loved him, wanted him, needed him, Tsuzuki would never believe it. And it was slowly going to drive them both insane. 

    "No," he said. "That's all I know about it." 

    Tsuzuki nodded again, and said nothing. 

    "Okay, spill," Watari said cheerfully, turning to face him again. "Why do you ask? You smitten?" 

    Tsuzuki turned a pale shade of pink. "It's not that," he said, his voice bordering between anger and embarrassment. "I just wanted to know, that's all." 

    Watari gave him a considering look. "When you look at Bon now, what do you feel?" 

    Tsuzuki said nothing for a long minute. There was no way to describe the aching sense of longing, the fierce need to protect, to shelter, to comfort. To wrap Hisoka up so nothing else could hurt him. At least, there was no way to describe it without sounding like a lovesick idiot. 

    He was silent so long that Watari thought he was not going to answer. 

    "I just don't want to let him get hurt again," Tsuzuki finally whispered. Why was it that when he looked at the younger boy, along with everything else which could easily be explained by love, why was there so much guilt? What had he done to Hisoka? Or at the very least, what was he blaming himself for doing? 

    Watari nodded, as if this was what he had expected. 

    "He's been gone a long time," Tsuzuki said. 

    "Nah," Watari said. "Bon goes on walks that last for hours when he's got something on his mind. He does it all the time." 

    "Oh." Tsuzuki looked at the stacks of paper. "Now what?" 

    "I think we're going to try something new," Watari said. "It's obvious that we can't track this thing, but there may be a way to reduce the spell without finding the actual thing that cast it. I want to go back to the Meifu and look into it." 

    Tsuzuki nodded. "All right." 

~~~~ 

    Hisoka trudged through the rain with his hands in his pockets, wandering through the streets aimlessly. His headache had faded as soon as he had gotten out of the small hotel room. Even under normal circumstances, being around two people that stressed would be bad for him. And these were hardly normal circumstances. 

    What he was beginning to think he should mention to Watari was this horrible buzzing that he couldn't seem to get rid of. He didn't know if it was a side effect of being dead, or if there was something really wrong. 

    No, that wasn't true. He knew. If he'd been living with this for years, he'd be insane by now. 

    So, the buzzing was not normal. He would mention it to Watari as soon as he got back to the hotel room. Along with, perhaps, this maddening image of the moth and the flame. There had to be some meaning to that. 

    What puzzled him was that his empathy was not wont to translating emotions into images. Emotions were emotions. He felt them; he didn't see them. So why couldn't he get this image out of his head? 

    He sighed and kicked at a small rock. He was soaked through, and feeling distinctly displeased. 

    _(come here)_

    Hisoka shook himself. The buzzing in his head intensified, and he wavered slightly, listing to one side. He quickly put one hand against the wall of a building to steady himself. It was cold underneath his fingers. 

    _(come here, little boy, I can give you anything you want, I can give you your heart's desire, I can)_

    The rain was falling steadily. It slid down the back of his shirt and had long ago soaked into the top of his jeans. It dripped from his hair and obscured his vision. He couldn't really see. But he could hear. He could hear something calling to him, 

    _(do you want your friend Tsuzuki? I can give him to you, I can see that all he thinks about is you, if you will come to me, feed me, provide me)_

    drawing him closer, drawing him in. 

    Its voice was soft, sweet, barely audible. There was a better word for it 

    _(seductive? was that the word?)_

    but Hisoka couldn't think of it off the top of his head. He shivered and began to walk again, stumbling along through the rain. He was suddenly struck by the desperate urge to be back at the hotel, back within the safety that Tsuzuki and Watari provided. He stopped and looked around -- 

    and realized he had no idea where he was. He had been walking without purpose, and for some reason, he had not thought to keep track of how to get back to the hotel. Stupid, stupid, stupid. 

    And that buzzing kept getting louder. No more seduction. Now just a hint of a threat. 

    _(come here, you foolish child, unless you want me to get angry)_

    He was walking again. Towards the noise. He didn't remember starting to move. 

    The world tilted to one side and he stopped, closing his eyes against nausea. He crossed his arms over his chest, gasping for breath. 

    "Looks like you're not doing too well, boy," an amused, arrogant voice spoke up. Hisoka's shivers increased as memories washed over him. He could not bring himself to look up, could not bring himself to see that familiar smirk and silver hair. He sensed more than saw that hands were reaching towards him, and he knew he was caught, and tried to brace himself for the empathic flood. 

    But when the hands touched him, he felt no evil, no malice or perversion. Just a bit of confusion and concern. Hisoka looked up to see a hand on each of his shoulder and normal brown eyes. "Oh . . ." he said. "It's you." Had he dreamed Muraki's voice? No, the other man was standing there, smiling, slightly behind his friend. 

    "You're not looking too well," Muraki said, and smirked. 

    Hisoka thought he might throw up. Oriya gave Muraki a dirty look. 

    "What are you doing here?" Hisoka finally asked, directing the question at Oriya, figureing that he might get a decent answer that way. 

    "Chaperoning him," Oriya said dryly. "What are you doing wandering around in the rain, you idiot?" 

    "Nothing." Hisoka shoved his hands aside. He didn't want Oriya to be concerned. He didn't want help from either of them. He just wanted to get back to the stupid hotel. He knew the name of it; he could ask someone for directions. Once he got back there, he would be safe, both from Muraki and from whatever this thing was. 

    Oh, but it didn't like that plan. 

    _(you stupid boy, come here, come HERE)_

    The buzzing was so loud that Hisoka couldn't think. He pressed both his hands against his ears and bit his lip to avoid crying out. This was not a good time to freak out. Not when he was alone with these two. He had to pull himself together. 

    "Oi," Oriya said, taking a step forward. "Are you okay?" 

    _(COME HERE)_

    From a thousand miles away, Hisoka heard himself cry out in what sounded like unimaginable pain. Then the world flickered out, and he fell forward, into Oriya's waiting arms. 

~~~~ 


	10. Chapter Nine

_Lots of pretty Muraki/Oriya stuff in this chapter. Not that I'm recently obsessed with that pairing or anything... no, of course not._

Chapter Nine 

    "Well . . . now what?" Oriya started to lay Hisoka on the ground, then thought better of it and plunked him down on a nearby bench instead. He gave Muraki a skeptical glance. "And I would highly advise you to discard whatever three answers first come to your mind." 

    Muraki cleared his throat. He discarded the most obvious (using Hisoka as bait for Tsuzuki), discarded the second most obvious (using Hisoka in other manners), and discarded the third (killing him right there on the spot). "I suppose you're going to suggest we take him back to Tsuzuki's loving arms," he said, a bit snappishly. 

    "You know me well," Oriya said. "They're probably staying in a hotel, ne?" 

    Muraki glared at him and said nothing. 

    "Oh, yeah," Oriya said. "Like I'm going to believe you don't know where they were staying. Honestly, you're such a jerk sometimes." 

    Muraki's glare intensified. "You might want to stop and think for once in your life," he said, annoyed. "What do you think Tsuzuki and that irritating Shadowmaster will do if we show up on their doorstep with this unconscious brat?" 

    Oriya gave Hisoka a speculative look. "Well, he's not bleeding from his eye sockets, so he's doing better than usual," he remarked. 

    The glare shifted, very subtly, into a dirty look. "You really don't believe they'll just let us waltz in there, drop him on the bed, and say 'oh, here's your partner, we found him lost in the rain.' Do you? Because if you do, I'm sadly disappointed. I thought you were smarter than that." 

    "Look," Oriya said, giving him a withering look, "if you don't propose we take him back, and you know damn well I'll veto whatever your other suggestions would have been, what the hell do you suggest we do?" 

    Muraki shrugged. "Leave him here." 

    Oriya shifted from foot to foot. "It's raining," he pointed out. 

    "Since when did you become such a hero?" Muraki asked, sounding amused. "What, are you afraid he's going to catch the sniffles?" 

    "Look, won't you just tell me where their hotel is?" Oriya asked, frustrated. 

    "No." Muraki turned and began to walk away. Oriya ground his teeth and hovered for a minute in indecision. He didn't particularly want to leave Hisoka sitting on the bench, given that he was obviously either ill or suffering from some sort of magical trauma. But if he brought him along, he'd have to keep a sharp watch on Muraki the entire time, and that wouldn't exactly be fun. He would also have no way of stopping Muraki from using Hisoka to lure Tsuzuki in. 

    "Sometimes I hate you so much," he said. He scooped Hisoka up and lifted him over one shoulder. "Let's bring him back to the hotel room we got." 

    "That's where I was heading," Muraki said. 

    "You're an arrogant prick," Oriya stated. 

    "And you think you know what's best," Muraki replied. "But you don't. Not in this case, anyway." 

    Oriya snorted. "I know that your concept of what's best and what isn't is quite a far cry from reality. I also know that you're a pedophilic pervert." The insult was tossed off casually. He wasn't really thinking about what he was saying. He was trying to plan out how to keep Muraki from torturing Hisoka. 

    He just had to keep him distracted long enough to figure out where the hell the Shinigami were staying. If he was lucky, Hisoka would wake up and leave on his own. But something about his sudden collapse made Oriya suspect that this was something far deeper than physical. 

    They walked back to their hotel in sullen silence. Oriya deposited Hisoka on the bed after laying some towels down. He really was soaking wet, and Oriya didn't relish the thought of sleeping on wet blankets. He sat down with the phone book. 

    "What on earth are you doing?" Muraki asked. "Don't tell me you're seriously going to call all the hotels until you've figured out where they're staying." 

    "Actually, I was going to order us some Chinese food, but now that you mention it . . ." 

    "Ha ha," Muraki remarked dryly, rolling his eyes. Keeping half an eye on Oriya, he wandered over towards the bed and sat on the edge of it. He watched as Oriya dialed the first hotel and asked if any guests named Tsuzuki Asato or Kurosaki Hisoka were registered. He watched as he hung up. Oriya appeared absorbed in what he was doing, but Muraki didn't buy it. He slid one hand towards Hisoka. 

    As he had suspected, he hadn't gotten more than an inch closer when he found the blade of a knife resting on his wrist. He smirked up at Oriya's mild expression. 

    "You're really trying to piss me off, aren't you," Oriya said, withdrawing the knife. "Touch him, and I'll slice all your fingers off. And maybe some other things that you're fond of." 

    Muraki laughed and withdrew his hand. In truth, he knew that Oriya could honestly wipe the floor with him in a physical fight. Oriya had been trained in martial arts ever since he had been born. If he was able to use magic, however . . . 

    Well, then Oriya posed no threat at all. 

    Of course, a battle of that sort would probably end in Oriya being dead, and although Muraki was not quite sure why, he knew without question that he did not want Oriya to be dead. 

    He sat back to wait. 

    Twenty minutes later, Oriya got off the phone. He looked like he was in a foul mood. "They're not registered anywhere," he snapped at Muraki. 

    "Well, don't look at me like it's my fault," Muraki said mildly. 

    "It is damn well your fault," Oriya retorted. "If you had just told me where their hotel was, then I wouldn't have had to make all the damn phone calls. I suppose they're probably registered under another name . . ." He glared at Hisoka speculatively, and wondered if he could get him to wake up. "Oh, move over," he snarled at Muraki, shoving him off the bed. 

    Muraki landed on the floor with a thud and held back a wince. Oriya could get downright violent when he was in a bad mood. He watched as his friend sat where he had been and shook Hisoka gently. "He's not going to wake up," Muraki said. 

    "I can see that," Oriya said through clenched teeth. 

    "I think he's under some sort of spell," Muraki said, leaning against the bed and not bothering to get up off the floor. "Either that or something's short-circuited in his head, and he won't be awake for quite some time." 

    "Some help you are," Oriya replied. 

    "Relax, Oriya," Muraki said, sounding amused. "Go light a cigarette. It'll help you calm down." 

    Oriya rolled his eyes and walked over to where he had left his cigarette holder. He didn't like just holding them in his fingers. It made his skin yellowish. He had been a chain smoker in college. Recently, he'd forced himself to cut back. It was hard to do martial arts when he couldn't breathe. 

    When he turned back, Muraki had moved back to where he'd been sitting on the bed, and was possessively running his fingers through Hisoka's hair. Oriya nearly had a conniption. "Will you please STOP that?" 

    Muraki smirked. "You're the one who decided to bring him here. I would have been content to leave him on a bench in the rain." 

    Oriya fought the urge to slap the smirk right off his face. "You're going to be doing that every damn time I turn my back, aren't you," he asked. "If I need to go to the bathroom, you'll have half his clothes off by the time I get back out here." 

    "It's possible," Muraki conceded, playing with one of the buttons on Hisoka's shirt. 

    "And you're doing it just to piss me off, aren't you." 

    "Perhaps." 

    Oriya cursed inwardly and ran through the possibilities. He couldn't get a hold of the other Shinigami; he didn't know how. He could go around to every hotel, but that probably wouldn't result in anything better than calling had, and would leave Muraki alone with Hisoka. That was just no good. The best option he could think of was to keep him overnight and hope that he would wake up in the morning, but this game he was going to have to play with Muraki was going to drive him nuts. 

    He was tempted to try reverse psychology, and claim that he didn't care what Muraki did, and wander off. By far the easiest option, but it was perfectly possible that Muraki would then go ahead and do what he pleased just to spite him. 

    "You're insufferable, you know that?" he asked, exasperated. 

    "Mm hmm." Muraki stood up and walked over to where Oriya was still standing with the cigarette holder in hand, unlit. "There are, of course, other ways to keep me entertained . . ." 

    Oriya closed his eyes. "Please tell me that you're not about to say you've been taunting me in an effort to get into my kimono." 

    Muraki pushed his hair over his shoulders and ran one finger teasingly up and down the gap in aforementioned kimono. "And if I was . . .?" he asked softly, leaning over to breathe the words into Oriya's ear. 

    "If you were . . ." Oriya fought to not go weak at the knees. Damn it, he was not going to be manipulated by Muraki like this. "Then you might find yourself getting acquainted with my dagger very shortly." 

    "You wouldn't kill me, and we both know it," Muraki whispered, one hand sliding inside the kimono. "So why bother posturing? You want to keep the boy safe . . . and I want you. This way, we both get what we want." 

    Oriya closed his eyes and shivered. It had been so long since anyone had touched him like this. He was abstinent by choice, but he couldn't deny that he had missed it. And even when he had not been abstinent, no one had ever touched him the same way Muraki did. 

    Before he was fully aware of what was happening, Muraki had maneuvered him backwards and onto the other bed. Oriya rebelled at this. "I am not having sex in this room while he is asleep on the other bed," he said sharply. 

    Muraki chuckled, a low sound which made Oriya shiver again. "You don't think it would be funny if he woke up to this? He'd be traumatized for life . . . poor thing," he added, unconvincingly. 

    Oriya gave him a contemptuous look. Then he sharply pushed Muraki away and got off the bed. 

    "Change your mind already?" Muraki asked, amused. "You're so fickle, Oriya." 

    

    "Shut up," Oriya said. "You know I'm only doing this to protect him. It's not like I want it." 

    "You do want it," Muraki said, his voice the epitome of calm and reason. "If you didn't, you wouldn't have come with me. You knew that's what you were leading up to, even if you didn't know consciously." 

    Oriya thought about it and realized he was probably right. There was no way he could have possibly expected to spend a week or more in a hotel with Muraki, trying to keep him distracted from Tsuzuki and Hisoka, and not have sex with him. He hadn't thought about it, but he must have known it subconsciously. As usual, Muraki was right. 

    Well, damn the man anyway. 

    "It bothered you when I ignored you in favor of Tsuzuki," Muraki continued. "This is the only way you have to claim me back. You still have hope for me, Oriya. It's really rather endearing." 

    "Stop psychoanalyzing me," Oriya snapped. "You've got more mental disorders than I have kimonos, you freak." 

    Muraki just laughed. "Tell me I'm wrong. Go ahead." 

    Oriya looked sullenly at the carpet. Why was it that he could win nine out of ten arguments with Muraki, but when he lost, he got completely crushed into the ground? Somehow it didn't seem fair. 

    Muraki walked over to him and stood behind him, starting to push the kimono off. "That," he said quietly, planting a soft kiss on Oriya's shoulder, "is why you aren't going to resist. Because you still want to save me." 

    Oriya turned around and pulled the knife out again, pressing it against Muraki's throat. "You're wrong," he said. "I did want to save you. But I don't want to fuck you." He stepped forward, forcing Muraki back a step. And then another step. "Because you use me, and it pisses me off." Another step. "Maybe someday, when you're ready to have a real relationship, then I'll give a damn about saving you again. But until then, get out." 

    Muraki raised an eyebrow at him. He was backed up against the door to their room. 

    "Wait," Oriya said. He reached inside Muraki's shirt pocket and took out the hotel key to the room. "Now go. And don't come back. Maybe tomorrow, if I'm feeling benevolent, I'll let you back in." 

    Muraki laughed softly. "I can't. You've got me pressed up against the door and it opens inwards." 

    Oriya glared, then allowed him a few steps so he could get the door open. Then he backed him out into the hallway and slammed the door in his face. Muraki heard the bolt latch. He gave a low chuckle. The lock wouldn't keep him out, not if he was determined enough to get in, but he had a feeling that if he went back in, Oriya really might start using the knife. So instead, he decided he would find somewhere else to go. 

    Inside, Oriya leaned against the door and pressed one hand to his face. 

    He couldn't stop trembling. 

~~~~ 

    By six thirty, Tsuzuki was in a full blown panic and Watari had to admit that he, too, was worried. Although, as he had said, it was perfectly normal for Hisoka to take walks for hours when he was troubled, these were unique circumstances. He did not think that Hisoka would have just wandered off. 

    But for all intents and purposes, he had. Watari had left Tsuzuki in the hotel room and done a quick sweep of the area, but there had been no sign of the younger Shinigami. He was beginning to think that both Tsuzuki and Hisoka should have homing devices put in their collars. He'd never known anyone to get lost or kidnapped more often. 

    Then again, that was Muraki's fault. 

    Watari clenched his fists slightly. He was sure that somehow, the doctor was behind this. But he didn't know how to go about finding him. "Ne, Tsuzuki," he said. "Why don't you send out a tracker spirit for him? We ought to be able to locate him pretty quickly that way." 

    Tsuzuki's eyes brightened. "I didn't even think of that . . ." he admitted, a sure sign of how stressed and worried he really was. However, before Watari could further ponder this or Tsuzuki could send out a spirit, there was a knock on the door. "Maybe Hisoka forgot his key!" Tsuzuki said, and bounded over to the door to answer it. When he opened it, no one was there. Tsuzuki stopped, and stood very still. 

    "What is it?" Watari asked. He went over and leaned over his shoulder to see. Left on their doorstep were a dozen red roses. There was a small envelope on top of them with Tsuzuki's name on it. 

    With shaking hands, Tsuzuki opened the envelope and slid out a small piece of paper. His eyes scanned it quickly, then he took a deep breath and read it aloud. "My darling Tsuzuki. These roses are for you. Missing you always, Muraki Kazutaka." His voice cracked. "P. S.: Your young partner is looking very pale. You should keep a closer eye on him." 

    He crumpled the note and let it fall to the floor. 

    Watari cursed underneath his breath, and wondered how he could have been so stupid as to let Hisoka out and about by himself. 

    Tsuzuki rocked and swayed on his feet. 

    "What is it?" Watari asked, alarmed. 

    "I don't -- " Tsuzuki put one hand to his head. "I don't feel good," he said weakly. "Dizzy. Tired." 

    Watari's eyes widened. He started to scramble for the folder of papers, then darted back and caught Tsuzuki as he crumbled to the floor. 

~~~~ 

    Ten minutes later, Watari had papers spread all over the floor. Tsuzuki was unconscious on the bed. Watari had been unable to bring him back to consciousness. He felt a migraine starting at his temples. Hisoka was missing, presumably in the custody of Muraki, wherever he was. And Tsuzuki had passed out, which was never a good thing. 

    Watari looked over the papers. How could he have been so stupid? The memory was the first thing to go -- in every case, the actual sickness hadn't started until a day later. 

    This was definitely not good. 

    But the spell was off. They hadn't lost their personalities. Something had gone wrong. That meant they could possibly have more than the four days left, but it certainly wasn't something to bet on. 

    He closed his eyes and pressed two fingers against his temple. 

    The phone rang. He jumped, startled, and leaned over to answer it. "Watari desu." 

    There was a pause, then a cautious voice asked. "Is Tsuzuki-san there?" The voice was familiar, but offhand, Watari didn't place it. Who would have had their hotel room number? 

    "He can't come to the phone," Watari said. "What can I do for you?" 

    Another pause. "But this is his room." 

    "Hai." 

    "All right. This is Mibu Oriya. I thought you and Tsuzuki might be looking for the boy. Hisoka." 

    Watari jumped. "Yes, we are. How did you get this number?" 

    When Oriya spoke, he sounded irritated with himself. "The kiddo was carrying it in his pocket. I didn't think to check until now. I guess he wanted to make sure he could find his way back if he lost his memory again." 

    "Ohh," Watari said. He remembered Hisoka asking for the number when they had reached the apartment. "That's good. Why didn't he just tell you himself? No, never mind, don't answer that. He's probably fainted. And that's why he's with you." 

    If Oriya was surprised, he gave no sign of it. "Aa. Fainted right on top of Muraki and I. We didn't know where else to bring him, so we brought him back here." 

    Watari thought back to the note. "Yeah, well, Muraki sort of let us know with his cute little roses and nasty fanmail." 

    "What?" Oriya asked, sounding annoyed. 

    "Never mind." Watari's head ached. "Bon asked for the address, so you must have it. Can you bring him here? Or should I come get him?" 

    "I'll bring him." 

    "Good." Watari paused. "Why are you on our side?" 

    "Do you really need to know that?" Oriya asked irritably. "Isn't it enough to know that I am on your side? Hisoka never would have gotten in to see Tsuzuki if I hadn't let him. Tsuzuki never would have had the brains to go with Hisoka if I hadn't said something. Muraki would have molested Hisoka halfway to Tokyo by now if I hadn't intervened. Don't question my actions." 

    He hung up before Watari could reply. 

    Watari closed his eyes briefly. Tsuzuki tossed and turned slightly. After a pause, Watari turned and tried to estimate his fever. It was high, but not dangerously so. He let out a virulent curse. Then he sat back to wait. About fifteen minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Watari opened it and let Oriya in. 

    "Thank you for bringing him back," he said. 

    "My pleasure," Oriya replied. He deposited Hisoka on the bed next to Tsuzuki and immediately noted the similarities in their condition. He glanced around and saw the roses. "God, what an asshole," he snarled, glaring at them. "He never gives me roses." 

    That one statement cleared up a lot for Watari. 

    Oriya turned back to him. "Maybe you'd better tell me what's going on," he said evenly. "I might be able to help." 

    Watari figured that it could hurt. If Oriya wasn't on their side, he wouldn't have brought Hisoka back. And he had obviously protected the boy from Muraki. In any case, they needed all the help they could get. He explained the case and what had happened to Tsuzuki and Hisoka, and what he suspected was happening now. 

    Oriya listened in silence. A few minutes into the story, he lit his pipe and smoked while Watari explained. 

    "Do you have any idea where Muraki is now?" Watari asked, when he was done. 

    Oriya snorted. "Yeah, 'cause I can almost keep a hold of the man. No, I don't know. I kicked him out of the hotel because he was getting on my nerves. That must be when he brought his little present over. As to where he is now, I don't know." He shrugged, then added reluctantly, "but he's probably got his cell phone. But why do you want to get hold of him?" 

    Watari lifted his hands in surrender. "I just wanted to be prepared for all eventualities, that's all." 

    Oriya nodded. 

    The door opened and Tatsumi walked in. "What's going on?" he asked. He saw Oriya and tensed, but didn't say anything. Then he noticed Tsuzuki and Hisoka's unconscious forms. "This cannot be good." 

    Watari turned to him and gave him a weary smile. "No," he said. "It isn't." 

~~~~ 


	11. Chapter Ten

_It's not dead! It's not dead!! _

Of course, I have no idea if anyone remembers even the slightest bit of what was going on. Eheh. Please forgive any typos. I'll try not to be as long with the next chapter, I swear. 

Chapter Ten 

    Watari briefed Tatsumi on everything that had happened since his departure. Tatsumi listened with his usual stoic lack of expression, but Watari could see the worry in his eyes. Oriya just kept chain-smoking, as if he expected this to help. 

    After Tatsumi had given all the same useless suggestions that Watari had been batting around in his own head, they sank into gloomy silence. Everyone jumped as the phone rang, then Watari leaned over and scooped it up. "Watari desu." 

    There was a slight pause, then a smoothly familiar voice. "Is Oriya there?" 

    Watari cupped his hand over the receiver and mouthed 'It's Muraki' at Oriya. Several expressions chased across Oriya's face: surprise, suspicion, annoyance. Then he grabbed the phone. "So you really did have this number the whole time, you bastard," he snarled. "What do you want?" 

    "I just wanted to make sure I was right and that you had actually gone over there like the fool that you are," Muraki said with a slight sigh. "I suppose there's not much to be done for it." 

    "No," Oriya said. "There's absolutely nothing to be done for my lingering humanity." 

    Watari and Tatsumi exchanged glances. 

    "So now you're all over at their hotel," Muraki said dryly. "All in one neat little place if this demon decides to come get you." 

    "Oh, screw you," Oriya said, trying to pretend he wasn't nervous at Muraki's statement. "You talk like you know something about all this." 

    Silence. 

    "Oh my God," Oriya said. "You know something about this." He slammed the phone back in the cradle. 

    Watari and Tatsumi both looked startled at this. "Ano . . ." Watari began to interrupt, about to ask if it was all right to hang up on Muraki if he knew something about the situation. As much as he loathed the doctor, they couldn't afford to pass up any possibility of information. 

    Oriya held up his hand, warding off whatever Watari was going to say. Holding up his fingers, he slowly counted down from five. Just as he lowered the last finger, the phone rang again. Grinning at the look of amusement on Watari's face, Oriya picked up the phone. "What?" 

    "What'll you give me for the information?" 

    Oriya hung up again. "That jerk," he muttered, underneath his breath. 

    The phone rang. Oriya grabbed it before the others had even registered the sound, but said nothing. 

    "Don't be so contrary, Oriya," Muraki said, sounding amused. "Don't you want to know so you can help your new friends?" 

    "What do you want?" Oriya asked flatly. 

    "Well, to start with, you know I don't want Tsuzuki-san to die, so I'd think that perhaps we could all put aside our differences and work together on this. But as for the immediate . . . I think we've already discussed at some length what I'm interested in." 

    Oriya hung up the phone a final time, more quietly. They waited in silence, but it didn't ring. 

    "He's not going to call." Tatsumi stated the obvious. 

    "He wasn't going to tell me anyway," Oriya snapped. "He just likes to taunt me." 

    "Regardless of whatever's going on between you two, understand that I'm a little more deeply invested in the situation than you are," Tatsumi said. His voice was calm, but his eyes had started to glint dangerously. "So perhaps whatever issue you two are having could be – " 

    Hisoka groaned and sat up abruptly. "Where am I?" 

    They stared at him in surprise. "Bon?" Watari asked tentatively. "Do you remember us?" 

    Hisoka glared at him. "Of course I remember you. Well, from today anyway," he added hastily, not wanting to give them the wrong impression. "But . . . what happened? I was out in the rain, and then . . . there was this voice, and it wouldn't stop . . . and you were there." He looked at Oriya, his eyes narrowing. 

    Watari smacked himself in the forehead. "How could I be so stupid!" he announced abruptly, digging through the stacks of paper. "It never takes more than one at once! They can't both be infected by the demon; it doesn't have the capacity! It always went from victim to victim after each one died! It's only Tsuzuki that's . . ." 

    They all blinked at Tsuzuki, who was lying very still. 

    "Is that supposed to be comforting?" Oriya drawled. 

    "But Kurosaki-kun also lost his memory," Tatsumi pointed out, determined to be logical. "If he's not infected by the demon, then why did he lose his memory? And why did he pass out just now?" 

    There was a long pause. "I don't know," Watari finally said. 

    "And I thought it wasn't a demon," Tatsumi added. "Because there was no demon in the Makai that had this power." 

    "Well, no demon that we knew about," Watari said, "which is slightly different, but there was that name on the Kiseki, which means that at one point the person was human . . . but . . ." 

    "Can a human become a demon?" Oriya asked curiously, wondering if he should be worried about Muraki in this regard. 

    "In certain cases," Tatsumi said, still frowning faintly. "It's very rare. There's rituals and sacrifices . . . and in most cases, they become a demon so weak that the other Makai turn on them and kill them almost immediately." 

    "So we still know absolutely nothing," Watari said with a sigh. "Shinigami, meet square one." 

    "I believe we're well acquainted," Tatsumi said dryly, glad that he was still able to find amusement in Watari's commentary. 

    Oriya frowned at Hisoka, who was staring fixedly off into space, and had been ever since the discussion had started. "Oi, kiddo," he said. "You still with us?" 

    Hisoka jerked his head towards Oriya, then shook himself slightly. "I'm sorry, what?" 

    "I asked if you were still with us," Oriya said, "but your reaction made the answer a fairly clear no." 

    Hisoka shook his head. "I keep . . . drifting . . . I can hear it, it's like sandpaper inside my head . . ." He lifted both his hands to his ears and rubbed vigorously, as if this would make the voice go away. 

    Watari knelt by the edge of the bed. "What voice?" 

    "It's . . . it's calling to me, like . . . it wants me to come, but I don't know why. It . . . it promises me things, or threatens me. It's inside my head!" Hisoka's voice rose slightly in pitch and he looked wildly up at Watari. "Make it stop, it won't stop, it's calling me . . ." 

    Watari glanced at Tatsumi, who nodded slightly. "Then let's follow it," Watari said with false cheer. "Let's see where it wants you to go." 

    As much as Hisoka's common sense told him that this was a Bad Idea, he couldn't help but obey. As soon as the words were out of Watari's mouth, he struggled upwards and stumbled towards the door. His feet were no longer under his control, no longer moving of his own volition. 

    Watari hastened to follow, then glanced at Tatsumi. 

    "I'll stay here with Tsuzuki-san," Tatsumi said evenly. "Muraki-san is still out there." 

    "I'll go." Oriya stood, suddenly glad he had brought his katana. With Muraki in such a poor mood, it had seemed like a reasonable amount of caution to exhibit. Watari nodded and the two of them followed Hisoka out of the building. As soon as he was in fresh air, he began to run. 

    "Wait for us, Bon!" Watari called, starting to lose sight of him in the dim, rainy distance. Hisoka showed no signs of slowing. 

    "We're not going to be able to keep up," Oriya said, already out of breath. 

    Watari considered his options, then rolled his eyes. He'd have to fly in order to catch up; that ought to be amusing. "Grab hold 'round my waist," he instructed. Oriya blinked for a few seconds, then did what Watari had said. Watari launched himself into the air moments later. 

    He had loved flying from the first moment he had realized that, as a Shinigami, he now had the power to. For quite some time, he had tried to figure out the physics of it, since the Shinigami still had regular bodies. These efforts had been to no avail, however, so he had decided it would be easier to just enjoy it. 

    It wasn't as if it even required physical motion. He just hovered in the air and thought about going forward, and forward he went. Singularly bizarre, in Watari's opinion. It seemed that Oriya agreed with him on that count; the other man's arms were wrapped around him tightly enough to pinch, and he was most decidedly not looking down. 

    "Ah, I see him!" Watari crowed, coming down through a slight bank of mist to see Hisoka stop dead and look around, bewildered. There were on an abandoned playground. 

    Watari landed with a thud, causing Oriya to lose his balance and nearly fall. Hisoka simply stood in the middle of the playground and looked around slowly. "It . . . it's . . ." He pressed both his hands against his ears. "It's here, I can . . ." 

    The sky opened up and rain started to pour down. Visibility was immediately so bad that Watari had trouble keeping track of the others. Hisoka was only visible because of his bright orange shirt, and Oriya only because they were just a few feet apart. 

    "What the hell is going on?" Oriya yelled. 

    Watari gave him a helpless look. 

    _/ you're here /_

    Hisoka took a few stumbling steps forward, towards the swing set. He couldn't see anything, but he could hear the voice calling him. It was in his mind rather than in his ears, but he could hear it clearly all the same. 

    _/ I'm so glad you came / _

    "Bon, no!" Watari grabbed Hisoka by the back of the shirt and tugged him away. Hisoka struggled against his grip, but Watari held him firm. 

    _/ come to me come to me COME NOW / _

    Watari found himself thrown backwards by a burst of psychic power he hadn't known Hisoka capable of. He landed flat on his back and groaned, struggling back to his feet. The rain had let up enough so he could see what was happening. Hisoka managed another few steps forward, then stopped dead. Oriya's katana was leveled at his face. 

    "You'll have to go through me," Oriya said, and he cut an impressive figure, despite the fact that he was drenched and shivering. 

    For a few moments, everything was very still. 

    "You have to make everything so difficult, don't you," a light, childish voice said. They stared wildly through the rain to see the young girl get off one of the swings and start towards them. She seemed utterly unaffected by the rain. "That's all right. You probably won't believe me, but I was trying to get him to come here so I could free him from the spell I put on him." 

    Watari looked at her incredulously. "You're right. We don't believe you." 

    She rolled her eyes, an adult expression on her childlike face. "It got tangled up somehow," she said petulantly. "On both of them, but him the worst, because of his . . . his . . . I don't know the word." 

    Dumbfounded, Watari managed, "Psychic magic?" 

    "Yes, that's it," she said. "It got tangled with the spell, because the spell is also psychic magic, although of a different sort." 

    They still stared at her. "You don't sound like a six year old," Oriya finally said. "But then again, I guess you're not. Exactly how old are you?" 

    She giggled. "Never ask a lady her age." 

    "You're not a lady," Watari said flatly. He glanced over at Hisoka worriedly. With the demon's entrance, he had gone very still, and was staring at her blankly. His expression was totally empty. "We found you on the Kiseki. At one point you were a thirty-six year old man." 

    The demon shrugged. "The spell sort of warps depending on the last person I've taken." 

    "Okay, you know what?" Oriya asked abruptly. "I don't like this. Because I've seen enough movies to know that when the villain starts explaining herself to you, it's because you're all about to die. So what do you say we get the hell out of here before something happens?" 

    "No," Watari said. "Not until I know how to get Tsuzuki back." 

    The demon giggled. "You can't. He's wonderful. I'm never letting him go. His power . . . it burns me, but it still feels sooooo good. If I just keep him forever, then I can keep feeding off others without having to stop and rest for years and years in between . . . I'll grow more and more powerful . . ." 

    "Release Hisoka, then," Watari said, his voice very quiet. "Since you don't need him. Let him go." 

    She shrugged. "All right." 

    They watched her distrustfully as she stepped forward lightly and pressed her index finger against his forehead. Hisoka's eyes closed and he sagged to the ground. Oriya just barely managed to catch him before he wound up face first in the mud. 

    "You're pretty strong, too," the girl said, and Oriya found himself staring directly into her large brown eyes. "And you've got a much better form than this one . . . I think . . ." She reached out. Oriya tried to get to his katana, but his arms were full of Hisoka and he wasn't fast enough. 

    A sharp crack went off; the sound of a gunshot. The demon flew backwards a few feet, then got to her feet, snarling. 

    "Touch Oriya," Muraki said quietly, leveling the gun at her, "and I will kill you." 

    Everything was still for a few moments. 

    "Fine," she snapped. "Ruin my fun." 

    With that, she was gone, and so was the rain. 

    Oriya allowed himself to breathe again. He slowly got to his feet, picking Hisoka up with him and laying him down on a bench. Watari hurried over and checked on him, but the younger Shinigami seemed fine, if asleep. He frowned and picked him up. 

    "Aren't you going to thank me?" Muraki asked, sounding amused. 

    Oriya punched him across the face. "You bastard," he snarled. "If you had just told me what was going on, I wouldn't have nearly gotten my soul sucked out and my good looks stolen by some demon brat. How the hell long have you known what was behind this?" 

    Watari, who had been about to walk away, paused. He was interested in hearing the answer to this. 

    Muraki wiped the blood off the corner of his mouth, where Oriya had hit him. "I've been looking into the possibilities every since we got to Aomori this time," he said smoothly. "There are only a few demons who possess this capability, and it didn't take me long to figure out which one it was." 

    "Was it telling the truth, just now?" Watari asked in a strained voice. "About Tsuzuki?" 

    There was a long pause. Muraki slowly nodded. "I believe so, yes." 

    "Great," Watari said, closing his eyes momentarily. "Well, we'll just have to find some way to stop it, that's all." He started walking back towards their hotel. "Oriya-san, are you going to be coming with us?" he asked over his shoulder. 

    Oriya glared at Muraki, then nodded shortly. "Yes." 

    "May he join you later?" Muraki said, getting hold of Oriya's wrist. "I believe he's a bit in my debt at the moment, and I'd like to speak to him." 

    Watari sighed. "I'm not getting involved in your lover's quarrel," he announced. "Oriya-san, do what you like. Chop his head off for all I care. Just meet me at the hotel later. Or don't. Just . . . oh, for God's sake, Muraki, buy him some roses, okay?" He stalked off with Hisoka in his arms, hardly believing what he had just said. 

    Muraki blinked after him. "I'm supposed to buy you roses?" 

    "You're not supposed to do anything," Oriya said irritably, folding his arms across his chest. "What do you want?" 

    Muraki shrugged. "You stormed out earlier, and then hung up on me. I wanted to be sure that you were safe. I should have known you would have walked into something stupid like this." 

    "Are you asking for me to hit you again?" Oriya snarled. 

    "Not particularly," Muraki said, his tone noncommittal. 

    Oriya scowled and drew back a fist to do just that. Muraki grabbed him by the wrist and twisted it up around his back, pulling him close, so they were facing less than an inch apart. "Let me go," Oriya hissed. 

    Muraki sighed. "And this is how you reward me for saving your life. Don't I get at least one kiss?" 

    "I'd reward you if you hadn't been such an ass all day and put me in the position to get killed." Oriya struggled to get free, but Muraki had him in a very tight grip, and he knew he wouldn't get away without making some concessions. "Fine. One kiss." 

    Muraki smiled and leaned forward, gently parting Oriya's lips with his own. Oriya's eyes slid closed and he surrendered to the kiss, wondering how Muraki managed to do this to him every damn time they were close. 

    And when Muraki released him, the loss was almost a physical pain. 

~~~~~ 

    Tatsumi stood up quickly when Watari walked into the room, drenched and bedraggled, and carrying an equally drenched and bedraggled Hisoka in his arms. "What happened?" he demanded. 

    "Hi, good to see you too, got a towel?" Watari asked. 

    Tatsumi sighed and went into the bathroom, coming out with two standard hotel towels. Watari had deposited Hisoka on one of the beds, and was checking him for a fever. He accepted one of the towels from Tatsumi and dried most of the water off of Hisoka's sleeping form. 

    "So what happened?" Tatsumi asked with clenched teeth. 

    Watari reached for the towel, but Tatsumi held it out of reach. The scientist rolled his eyes, but he smiled. "It's okay," he said, and explained in brief what had happened in the park. Tatsumi listened in silence during the monologue, his blue eyes troubled. 

    "So is there any way to get Tsuzuki back?" he asked. 

    "Well, not right now," Watari said. "But we did learn something important – the demon plans on keeping him in this sort of stasis forever. Since he regenerates, it's like she can eternally feed off his power. So we don't have a time limit, which is good." 

    Tatsumi nodded. "I suppose it is." 

    Watari bustled over to Tsuzuki's side. "Well, his fever hasn't gone up any and his pulse is steady, so he's not in any immediate danger . . . not that Shinigami can die of illnesses anyway, but . . ." He pushed his sopping hair out of his face, deep in thought. "She was able to release Hisoka from the spell with just a touch, so it couldn't have been too complicated a trigger . . ." 

    There was a pause, and a slight sigh from behind him. Tatsumi, seeing that Watari had totally forgotten about being soaked, draped the towel over his head. 

    "Huh? Oh, thanks." Watari accepted the towel and vigorously rubbed his hair dry. "So that's why I can't see," he muttered, taking off his glasses and trying, in vain, to dry them on the now damp towel. "Hm," he said, peering at them critically. 

    Tatsumi sighed and took the glasses from Watari's hand, pulling his handkerchief out of his suit pocket. "You're hopeless," he said severely. 

    "I know," Watari said, with his usual sunny grin. "Anyway, for now I think it might be best if we went back to the Meifu. If I can have use of my lab, I might have better luck determining how to help Tsuzuki. And anyway, it might be better that way, with Muraki wandering around making a nuisance of himself." 

    "Good idea," Tatsumi said. "And Mibu-san?" 

    "Hmm . . . I don't know, I said he could join us, but I really don't know what's between him and Muraki . . ." 

    "I'm not sure we can trust him," Tatsumi said. 

    "I'm not sure either," Watari admitted. "I mean . . . he did give us the keycard when it really mattered . . ." 

    "Because Muraki had told him to delay us, not defeat us," Tatsumi put in. 

    "And he did protect Bon from Muraki and make sure that he got back here safely, and I'm not exactly sure what that means." 

    Tatsumi shrugged. "I'm sure it means, at least in part, that he's jealous of the attention Muraki shows Tsuzuki-san and Kurosaki-kun. I'm sure that he also didn't wish Kurosaki-kun harm; however, I don't think bringing him to the Meifu is a good idea." 

    "Agreed," Watari said. "But we should at least wait here to tell him. We owe him that much." 

    "Why don't I do that, while you bring them back to the Meifu and get started?" Tatsumi suggested. "From what you said, he probably won't be long." 

    "Good idea." Watari frowned at Hisoka. "I wonder if he'll wake up?" he said absently. "I'm not sure I can haul both of them with me." He leaned over Hisoka and shook him lately. "Oi, Bon. Wake up." 

    Hisoka's eyes fluttered open and he groaned. "God . . . head hurts, lemme lone . . ." 

    Tatsumi rolled his eyes. "At least he hasn't lost his personality," he remarked dryly. 

    Hisoka half sat up, pressing one hand to his forehead. "What happened?" he asked. 

    "Close encounter with the demonic," Watari said nonchalantly. "Let's start with the basics. How do you feel?" 

    "Headachey, but . . . okay other than that." 

    "Still hearing voices?" 

    Hisoka smiled crookedly. "No more than usual." He realized with a sigh of relief that the demon's voice really was gone. The incessant buzzing that he had been hearing ever since waking up on the playground with no memory had stopped. 

    "And your memory?" Watari asked cheerfully. It looked like the spell had really gone to the wayside. 

    Hisoka shook his head. "It . . . it's still gone." 

    Watari's crow of triumph stopped before it passed his lips. "Really?" 

    Hisoka nodded. "Really." 

    "Oh," Watari managed. "But . . . the spell was released. Or at least I'm pretty sure it was, or else you'd be sick, or . . . uhm . . . something." He looked uncertainly at Tatsumi. 

    Tatsumi sighed and said quietly, "Just because the spell has been released, doesn't mean that the damage that was done can be undone." 

    Hisoka stared into his lap. "You mean my memory may be unrecoverable." 

    Tatsumi nodded. "But we don't know for certain. And if anyone can solve this, I'm sure it's Watari." He gifted Watari with a rare, thin smile. "So you three get back to the Meifu and get to work. I'll follow you shortly." 

    Watari stood, helping Hisoka get to his feet. Then he carefully lifted Tsuzuki up to cradle him in his arms, while Hisoka watched him anxiously, as if afraid that the slight movement could harm him. "All set?" Watari asked him, shifting slightly so carrying Tsuzuki was easier. 

    "Yeah," Hisoka said, and vanished. 

    Tatsumi put a hand on Watari's shoulder. "I'll leave Tsuzuki-san to you," he said. 

    Watari nodded, knowing that from Tatsumi, that implied greater trust than perhaps any other statement on earth. "I won't let you down." 

~~~~ 


	12. Chapter Eleven

_Attention: Here lies a long-winded author's note. PLEASE READ. Please please please. I'll feel like a dork if you don't. _

This is sort of an explanation for... parts of this fic. When I started it, it was with the sole intention of making Tsuzuki and Hisoka lose their memories and using that as a vehicle for a quasi-romance and... lots of angst. The problem was that coming up with a way for this to happen was hard. So I tossed around a lot of random details to make the case interesting. 

Now I'm stuck attempting to tie all those details together. I *suck*. 

Basically, this note is to say: Yes, I'm aware there are inconsistencies. Yes, I'm aware that the "casefic" aspect of this fic really... sort of blows chunks. And no, I don't really care that much. ^^ I stopped writing this for months and months because I was searching for a way to fix it, and I couldn't. So I'm basically going to ignore a lot of the stuff earlier in the fic to make the damn thing *work* again. 

And to have lots of angst. 

Thank you and enjoy the rest of the fic. 

Chapter Eleven 

    Once back in the Meifu, Watari carefully helped Tsuzuki into one of the beds in the infirmary, and prepared for what he called an 'all night research party'. Hisoka, being sensibly frightened by this, opted to stay in Tsuzuki's room, while Watari went around collecting chocolate, computer disks, and books. 

    Unfortunately for him, Watari took the objects, once collected, into their room. "To keep an eye on Tsuzuki," he said, with an air of confidence as he set up his laptop. Hisoka gave him a look that bordered between suspicion and annoyance. 

    However, Watari's idea of a party didn't seem to involve anything loud, so he was able to ignore it. After a while, he dozed, lulled by the steady noise of Watari's typing. He awoke when someone shoved a steaming mug of tea in his voice. "Here," a voice said. 

    Hisoka jumped a mile in the air. "I-It talked!" 

    Watari fell out of his chair laughing, while the younger Gushoshin blinked at Hisoka in puzzlement. "Ano?" it finally said. 

    "And it's floating!" Hisoka squawked. "And – and – and it has a HAT!" 

    After several minutes of hysterical laughter, Watari managed to compose himself. "Sorry, Bon," he said, wiping tears off his cheeks. "It's just . . . I've never seen anyone actually met the Gushoshin for the first time before, and . . . and you had the exact same reaction I did!" He went off into gales of laughter, while Gushoshin younger looked slightly put out about the whole conversation. 

    Hisoka only managed a slight whimper. 

    "Would you like the tea?" Gushoshin Younger finally asked. 

    "A . . . aa," Hisoka managed, accepting the mug. He sipped at it and was grateful as the warmth spread through him. He hadn't realized how cold he had been after getting drenched in the rainstorm. He noticed suddenly that Watari had changed clothes, and could only assume that the scientist kept some on hand. (Unbeknownst to Hisoka, Watari had actually just changed back into the clothes he had been wearing when the whole misadventure had started.) 

    Gushoshin floated off, to the sound of Watari's laughter. 

    Watari went back to typing, after he had finally managed to stop chuckling, frowning at his computer screen. Muraki seemed to have confirmed that what they were hunting was a demon, but Watari knew that it had at one point been human. It might help to figure out how the transformation had taken place; then they might be able to reverse it and undo the spell that it had on Tsuzuki. 

    "Ne . . . Watari?" Hisoka asked. 

    Watari glanced over at him. The younger boy was sitting in the chair next to Tsuzuki's bed with the mug clenched between his hands, looking forlornly at his partner. "Yeah?" Watari asked. 

    "Do you really think that . . . that we can fix this?" Hisoka asked. 

    "Of course we can," Watari said confidently, his typing not even slowing down. "We've fixed every other scrape that the two of you have gotten into, haven't we?" 

    "I guess," Hisoka said. "I don't know much about it, though." 

    "Pfft," Watari said. "Don't worry so much. As long as we keep Muraki from getting much more involved, which I'm sure Tatsumi plans on doing, possibly taking off several of his limbs along the way, we'll be absolutely positively fine!" 

    Hisoka laughed slightly, but he didn't really sound like he meant it. He finished his tea and put the mug down, staring at Tsuzuki. "It's so strange," he said, shaking his head. "I don't remember, but . . . but it's like I still feel the same . . . however that was . . ." 

    Watari's lips twitched in a smile, and he quickly directed his attention back to his computer. He was more interested in ever than finding the solution, if only so he could get Tsuzuki and Hisoka to stop mooning over each other constantly. He wondered if Tatsumi would agree . . . 

    There was a long pause, then Hisoka sighed. He glanced surreptitiously over at Watari before reaching out and sliding his fingers through Tsuzuki's. Watari noticed, but pretended not to, loath to break up the sweet moment. Hisoka's eyes slid closed in exhaustion, and his head nodded slightly. 

    _/ It's so dark in here . . . / _

    Watari glanced over at Hisoka and noted that he had, in fact, fallen asleep. He grinned and got another blanket, spreading it over the smaller Shinigami's shoulders. Then he sat down at his computer and got back to work. He needed coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. 

    _/ Where are you? / _

    / I'm here . . . can you see me? Can you hear me? / 

    Preferably coffee with sugar and cream in it. Watari glanced over at the two sleeping Shinigami and wondered whether or not he could risk leaving them while he went to get it. Probably not. Things had been awfully weird lately, and he didn't want to risk missing the slightest change. 

    _/ Oh God, am I all alone in here? / _

    / No . . . I'm here . . . / 

    It would help, Watari mused, if Tatsumi could get his sorry ass back to the Meifu. Not that the secretary would appreciate being sent for coffee. Watari nearly burst into laughter again as he tried to picture that. __

    / It's so cold and dark . . . I don't like it here at all . . . / 

    / Then why don't you just leave? / 

    / Do you think I can? / 

    Still, Tatsumi might go graciously if Watari asked nicely. He had been known to do nice things in the past, even if it always made one want to grab a camera and get them on film so other people would believe them later. 

    Coffee, he decided with a nod. With lots of cream and sugar. Maybe mocha. That was what he needed to get him through this. And sooner or later, if he just kept looking long enough, he would come up with something that would help. It might take a few days, but they certainly had that much time. __

    / I think it couldn't hurt to try. / 

    / . . . show me? / 

    / . . . yes./ 

    Watari stared at the computer screen. No . . . no, that couldn't possibly say what he thought it did, could it? 

    Hisoka sat up, rubbing his head and reaching for the now empty mug. "It's cold in here," he mumbled. 

    "Ah . . . I can get you more tea . . ." Watari replied absently, staring at the computer screen. 

    Hisoka picked at the blanket that Watari had draped around his shoulders, wondering what had the scientist so vague and weird. Well, weirder than usual. He glanced over at Tsuzuki, who said, "I'm cold, too." 

    The mug slid through Hisoka's hands and shattered on the tile floor. 

    "Well, there's plenty of blankets to go – what the – ?" Watari's head whipped around and he stared blankly at Tsuzuki. "You're awake," he managed, rubbing his eyes as though Tsuzuki might disappear from sight, or at least go back to being comatose. 

    "Should I not be?" Tsuzuki asked nervously. 

    "But you – you're not – well, that is . . ." Watari frowned. "I guess maybe the spell doesn't reach into the Meifu? Or something. I guess we'd have to take a trip back to Chijou to be sure, but for now . . . you're awake! That's great!!" He shoved a chocolate bar into Tsuzuki's hands. 

    "I'm confused," Tsuzuki managed, but he began to munch on the chocolate. 

    "Join the club," Hisoka replied. 

~~~~ 

    There were many words that could appropriately be used to describe Tatsumi Seiichirou, and one of the foremost was patient. He had always been, by nature, a calm and patient man. And now he sat patiently on a hotel bed, waiting patiently for Muraki to arrive, so he could not-so-patiently rip his arms off. 

    He knew that when Oriya came, he would be bringing Muraki with him. He wasn't sure of the details of their relationship, but he trusted his instincts. Oriya would not be arriving alone; of that he was certain. 

    Watari had been gone nearly an hour before there was a knock on the door. Tatsumi walked over and answered it, and was not surprised to see Oriya and Muraki on the doorstep, as he had anticipated. He backed away and gestured for them to come in. "You've been quite some time," he observed dryly. 

    Oriya gave Muraki a vicious glare. "Someone delayed us," he said sharply, to which Muraki smiled, showing no remorse in the slightest. "Where are the others?" 

    "Watari-san took Tsuzuki-san and Kurosaki-kun back to the Meifu," Tatsumi said coolly. "I was only remaining here to inform you of this. It's no longer your affair, and I would be pleased if you could tell me what you know, and then you can feel free to leave Aomori and remove yourselves from harm's way." 

    "I'm afraid that wasn't really my plan," Muraki said smoothly. "I don't think I'm ready to remove myself from the situation just yet." 

    "I didn't figure you would be, Muraki," Tatsumi said, with a slight smile. "However, I wasn't aware that I was giving you a choice." He pushed his glasses up on his nose and gave Muraki a glance steely enough that it would have sent any of his coworkers running. "You will tell me what you know. I'm not playing games anymore." 

    Muraki gave Tatsumi his familiar smirk. "Is this where you say 'and if you won't tell me, I'll make you'?" 

    "Hardly." Shadows sprang up from every corner and wrapped Muraki in a tight embrace, effectively immobilizing him. The doctor laughed, not making any attempt to fight back. "I'm not precisely a man who wastes words," Tatsumi added. 

    Oriya looked between the two, fidgeting. In all honesty, he believed that Muraki deserved what he was getting; not to even mention that he was rather curious about what Muraki knew about the situation. He inwardly resolved to step in if it looked like Muraki was actually going to get strangled to death . . . which, from the glint in Tatsumi's eyes, wasn't looking too unlikely. 

    "Now," Tatsumi said calmly, "you will tell me what you know. Mibu-san, I suggest you not go for your katana." 

    Oriya cursed, and slowly slid his hands out of his pockets so Tatsumi could see them. He didn't even want to know how the Shinigami had known he was going to do that. He knew it couldn't kill him, but if it could distract him for a few moments, Muraki would have been able to get free. 

    "I really don't know much," Muraki said. He sounded amused, and not at all perturbed at being slowly suffocated by his own shadow. "It's nothing that you'd be interested in." 

    Tatsumi gave him a look. "I've changed my mind," he said, voice heavy with sarcasm. "Get your katana. I'd like to borrow it." 

    Oriya couldn't hold back a startled laugh at this comment. "I think I'm going to stay out of this, thanks." 

    "Good." The shadows slowly began to tighten around Muraki. Oriya sat on the edge of the bed and waited for Muraki to either get out of their hold, or tell Tatsumi what he knew. He didn't think Muraki would let himself be smothered for the sake of silence. His old friend had more self-preservation than that. 

    "It really isn't much," Muraki said, but his voice sounded strained. "In fact, I doubt I know more than you, with the entire Meifu at your fingertips. I just figured out how it was planning to use Tsuzuki-san before you did. As a continual battery, for lack of a better term." 

    "I don't know if I believe you," Tatsumi said, giving the doctor a speculative look. 

    Muraki's hands emerged from where they were encased in shadows, casually shedding the black covering and stepping out of it as if it was no trouble at all. Tatsumi frowned, but made no effort to stop him. "I just wanted you to be aware that I didn't tell you because I felt threatened," Muraki said pleasantly. "But if we're going to work together in this, of course you'll need to know the information I have." 

    "I would rather die another death than work with you," Tatsumi said coldly. 

    Muraki laughed. "I'm sure. But your afterlife isn't the one at stake here, now is it." 

    Tatsumi's fists clenched momentarily, then he appeared to relax. "As I said," he replied, now back to his impeccable calm, "we're done with the subject. Watari-san and I will take things over from here and find the solution in the Meifu. Feel free to depart whenever you like." 

    "Do you really expect to be able to do it?" Muraki asked calmly, with only a hint of taunt in his voice. 

    "I expect that it's really none of your business," Tatsumi said politely. "Tsuzuki-san's welfare is not – and has never been – your concern." He nodded briefly at Oriya, then turned and walked out the door. 

    Oriya grinned. "You just got your ass kicked." 

    Muraki rolled his eyes. "Well, you heard what he said. If it's not our concern, then there's no reason to sit around their hotel room." 

    "By which I assume you're implying that you're not going back to Kyoto like a good little psychotic doctor?" 

    "Cute, Oriya." 

    "Meaning no." 

    "I'm staying here until I know what's going on. What about you?" 

    Oriya shrugged. "Hey, I came along for the ride. I'm not going anywhere as long as you don't go anywhere." 

    Muraki smiled. "Then let's go back to our hotel." 

    There was a pause, then Oriya sighed and nodded. He knew what Muraki intended, but there didn't seem like much point in arguing the decision. Their room was the most sensible place to go. He'd have to just try to fend Muraki off once he got there. 

~~~~ 

    "Great news!" Watari crowed, as Tatsumi walked sedately into the room that Watari had taken up residence in. "Tsuzuki's awake!" 

    Tatsumi blinked at him, taken aback by this statement. After a moment, however, he regained his usual composure. "That's good news indeed," he said, dignified as usual. "Not that I want to look the gift horse in the mouth, but do we have any idea why?" 

    Watari smiled deviously. "Get me some coffee and I'll tell you." 

    "Watari-san." 

    "Please?" 

    Tatsumi heaved a much put upon sigh. "Oh, all right. But you had best explain things when I get back." 

    Watari grinned and waited, puttering, while Tatsumi left. 

    "So," Tatsumi said, coming back with two Styrofoam cups of coffee filled from the office supply. "Why is Tsuzuki-san awake? And for that matter, while I'm asking questions, where is Tsuzuki-san awake?" 

    Watari gestured to one of the small rooms in the infirmary. "He said he had a headache and my typing was bothering him, so I let him go in there. But I sent Bon with him to keep him from angsting to . . . to . . . a second death. And to let me know if anything happened." 

    "All right." Tatsumi seated himself with dignity and gave Watari a steely glare. 

    "So what happened with Muraki?" Watari asked curiously. 

    "Watari-san." 

    Watari cleared his throat. "Well, as far as I can figure, traveling between the Meifu and Chijou must have somehow stopped the curse in its tracks. Which makes sense, right? I mean, if death short-circuited it the first time, causing the memory part to at least mess up, then crossing over to the Meifu sort of puts it on permanent hold." 

    "That's very interesting," Tatsumi said. 

    "Well, it's a quick fix, but it's better than no fix at all," Watari said, shoving his hair out of his face. "I want to keep an eye on him for a little while, but I think it's safe to say that he'll be okay as long as we keep him here. Which gives us time." 

    Tatsumi nodded. 

    "So how did it go with one-eyed and evil?" Watari asked again. 

    "It went fine," Tatsumi said evenly. "I don't believe he knows anything other than the purpose the demon had Tsuzuki-san in mind for. I'm sure he's going to stay in the area, but for now, we don't have to deal with him. Now . . ." He gave Watari a sharp look. "What aren't you telling me?" 

    Watari grinned. "Whatever makes you think I'm not telling you something?' 

    "You have a smug look," Tatsumi said. 

    "Really?" Watari asked, interested. 

    "Yes." 

    "Well, I did find something interesting . . ." 

    "So I thought." 

    Watari grinned and propped his feet up on his desk. "You know, I'm going to expect something in return for all this hard work." 

    Tatsumi glared. "I'll see that you get the proper vacation time." 

    "You think small, Tatsumi," Watari said, lightly tapping the man on the nose. "Very small. Think of all the things I could accomplish in this lab if I only had the proper resources!" 

    "So you want funding." 

    Watari looked hurt. "Well, maybe just a little . . ." 

    Tatsumi coughed. "I'll consider it. Just tell me what you found before I'm forced to hurt you." 

    Satisfied with this answer, Watari explained. "Well, I was thinking that maybe we were going about this all the wrong way. Maybe we should try to figure out how this guy became a demon, rather than figure out how he did this particular spell. Because if we could undo that, it might be a lot easier to undo the spell." 

    He paused for breath. Tatsumi arched an eyebrow. "Continue." 

    "So I did a little research and found something very interesting," Watari said proudly. "Remember the guy we thought was doing all this?" 

    "Yes . . ." 

    "He's not. He's not on the Kiseki because he's cheated death every fifteen years. He's being forced to stay alive by the demon that's possessed his body." 

    "Like Saagatanasu." 

    "Yeah, exactly. Only this poor guy wasn't as powerful as Tsuzuki. He's stuck, because the demon is using his body and his magic. He gets to live forever – but so does the demon, and the demon's been amassing power for nearly a century. And thus far the demon has escaped notice from the other Makai – " 

    "Because they assumed it was a human," Tatsumi said grimly. 

    "Yeah. He's using the human guise as a shield until he's strong enough to stand against them." 

    There was a long pause. 

    "That's bad," Tatsumi finally said. 

    "It sure is." 

    Tatsumi regarded Watari gravely. "So what do you intend to do?" 

    "Haven't quite gotten there yet," Watari said cheerfully. "But don't worry, I will." He gave Tatsumi a thoughtful look. "Go home." 

    "Excuse me?" 

    "Go home," Watari repeated patiently. "You haven't taken a break since this whole mess started two days ago. You're going to fall over pretty soon. I at least started with a good night's sleep. Go home, get some rest, come back when you can help. I don't want you falling asleep in my lab." 

    Tatsumi sighed. "All right. But only because there isn't a time limit." 

    Watari smiled. "Of course." 

~~~~ 

    

    Fending Muraki off did not prove to be an easy job. By the time they reached the hotel room, Oriya was quite annoyed with the good doctor. "I'm taking a shower," he snarled, and slammed his way into the bathroom, muttering all the way about stupid Muraki. 

    He was not particularly paying attention, so he was taking off guard when the shower curtain slid open. He jumped nearly a foot, then leveled Muraki with a terrific glare. "Get out," he snarled. 

    "What if I won't?" Muraki asked, leaning close. 

    Oriya looked around for a weapon and didn't see one. Before he could come up with a retort – and he was sure that he would have come up with a really good one if he'd only had a few moments – Muraki had climbed into the shower with him. 

    "Touch my hair, and I'll kill you," he said. That was something he simply wasn't going to back down on. 

    Muraki laughed. He leaned forward and kissed Oriya soundly, backing him up so Oriya was trapped between him and the back of the shower wall. Without further delay, he ran one hand through Oriya's hair. Oriya, who had been momentarily distracted by things other than his hair, pushed him away. "I'm not going to be one of your fucking rape victims," he hissed. 

    "Then don't fight," Muraki said, and pressed him harder against the wall. His grip on Oriya's wrists tightened, enough to leave bruises. Oriya struggled to get free, but only succeeded in squirming up against Muraki and demonstrating how happy both of them were in their current position. 

     He jerked one wrist free and slapped Muraki across the face. "I'm – " 

    Muraki pulled him into a hard kiss, not allowing him enough leeway to escape. Oriya let out a surprised gasp and slammed his foot down on Muraki's instep. That was enough for Muraki's grip to loosen. Oriya moved to escape, but slipped on the shower floor and went tumbling down in a heap. 

    For a blindly panicked moment, he saw Muraki moving towards him and was sure that he wouldn't be able to escape. So it was with a little more force than was strictly necessary that he lifted his foot and kicked upwards with no real direction. He hit Muraki in the stomach with all his strength, sending the man sprawling backwards. 

    With effort, he scrambled to his feet and got out of the shower, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around his waist. "Don't you ever do that to me," he said viciously. "Don't you ever think that I'll put up with that shit from you. Fuck this. I'm going home." 

    He stormed out of the bathroom, snagging another towel on the way for his hair. As soon as he was out in the main room, he started throwing things into his suitcase. He expected Muraki to come after him. After a few minutes passed and he didn't, he started to feel like an idiot. 

    As usual, Muraki had played him. He had done something that he knew Oriya wouldn't forgive. 

    "To get rid of me," Oriya muttered irritably, staring at his suitcase, still naked except for the towel. "To get me out of harm's way. That's all I am. A fucking burden to him." 

    He closed the suitcase with a sigh. 

    "Oh, don't go," a light voice said. A child's voice. 

    Oriya spun around. The girl was only standing a few feet away from him. 

    "Don't go," she repeated, with a wicked smile. "I wouldn't want your friend to come out to save you again." 

    She reached for him. Oriya grabbed for his katana, which he had left lying on the bed, but he didn't even come close to reaching it. Her fingers lightly brushed his shoulder, and he collapsed to the ground. 

~~~~ 


	13. Chapter Twelve

_You might think my Muraki is out of character here. Then again, my Muraki thinks he's out of character, too, so that's all right._

Chapter Twelve 

    Muraki spent more time in the shower than was strictly necessary, hoping that Oriya would be gone by the time he got out. He knew that goading Oriya had perhaps not been the best idea in the world, but he was adamantly sure that he wanted Oriya out of harm's way. This was getting more and more dangerous by the minute. 

    He stepped out of the shower and toweled himself dry. He had left his clothes in the other room, so he merely wrapped the towel around his waist and left the room. 

    The first thing he noticed was the undeniable fact that Oriya was not gone. His belongings were still there, and in any case, Muraki could still sense his presence in the room. He sighed in frustration; Oriya had most likely figured out that Muraki had played him, and hadn't left. This would inevitably lead to more arguing. 

    The second thing he noticed was that, although Oriya was still there, he did not see the other man anywhere. 

    As he stood there in slight confusion, he noticed something that was both interesting, and although Muraki never would have admitted it, terrifying. 

    Oriya's aura was slowly fading from the room. 

    It was very slight. A less skilled magician never would have noticed. It would take days before it was fully gone. But it was definitely fading. 

    Muraki finally saw Oriya, at first only seeing his hair where it had spread out behind him as he fell. He hurried over and knelt at the other man's side, putting a hand on his shoulder and shaking him roughly. "Oriya. Oriya, wake up. Oriya!" 

    Oriya's eyes flickered open. He looked fuzzily up at Muraki. "Where . . .?" he managed. He tried to sit up, but the world went vague in front of his eyes and he slumped backwards. "My head hurts," he added, dazed. 

    Muraki gave him a piercing look. "Do you know where you are?" 

    "Huh? No . . ." Oriya looked around, his eyes more focused. "Who are you?" he asked, his tone now harsh, and a little afraid. "Who . . . who am I? What's going on?" He started to get up, realized he was clad only in a towel, and blushed fiercely. "What did you do to me?" 

    "I didn't do anything to – " Muraki realized this wasn't strictly true. He also realized that he, who never got the slightest bit worried, was coming close to panic. "Oriya, calm down. We're friends. You – must have fallen, hit your head." 

    "My head does hurt," Oriya admitted, rubbing at the back of it. He gave Muraki a still suspicious look. "Oriya? Is that my name?" 

    Muraki nodded, glad that Oriya didn't seem quite as ready to run him through. "Mibu Oriya is you. My name is Muraki Kazutaka." 

    "And we're . . . friends." Oriya's eyes traced slowly over Muraki and his towel, then over himself and his own towel. He laughed softly. "Is that it, then?" 

    Muraki saw his chance and started to leap for it. While investigating the case, he had come to the conclusion that ending the curse wouldn't be difficult – but the damage that had already been done by it was likely irreversible. Whether or not Oriya lived, the amnesia was permanent. 

    This was how he could fix everything between them. One simple, well-placed lie. 

    Oriya would never know the difference. 

    Oriya would never forgive him. 

    "Yes," he said quietly. "You had just gotten out of the shower, and I went in to take my own. When I came out, I found you like this." 

    One simple, well-placed lie. Simply not the lie he had intended. 

    Oriya looked at him for a long moment. Then he looked around the room, noted the two beds, both obviously slept in. He nodded slowly. "All right. I – I hit my head?" He frowned. "I don't feel a bump anywhere." 

    Muraki felt like a fool. How the hell had the demon gotten in, past the wards he had placed around the room, without his notice? Had he been that distracted by what had happened in the bathroom? 

    No, he decided immediately. Even distracted, he would have noticed. That meant that the demon had done something earlier, while it had been in the playground. Some preliminary connection with Oriya that had allowed it to slide underneath the wards to get to him. 

    Unless that it wasn't a demon. 

    He had been sure that it was. But the Shinigami had been certain that it wasn't. Both couldn't be true. But a human sorcerer would have been able to dispel his wards with more ease – and far more subtlety – than a demon, who would have just crashed through them. 

    "Muraki-san?" Oriya asked hesitantly. 

    "I'm sorry," Muraki said. "I was thinking." 

    "What about?" Oriya gave him a sharp-eyed look. "And don't start lying again. I didn't fall and hit my head, so why don't you tell me what's really going on?" 

    Muraki inwardly cursed Oriya for being so damned sharp. 

    The first day took their memory. 

    The second day took their strength. 

    The third day took their personality. Their soul? Perhaps. Muraki wasn't sure. 

    The fourth day took their life. 

    And he had no idea how much of that was reversible. He couldn't allow this to go until the last minute. He needed a solution, and he needed one right now. Playtime was over. 

    He ground his teeth. 

    He needed help. 

    Muraki relaxed slightly. He could get help. The Shinigami were pathetic, and their sense of honor wouldn't allow them to walk away. Oriya had saved Hisoka; they would feel obligated to save him in return. All he had to do was get their attention – and that would not be terribly difficult. They kept a very close eye on him. 

    He turned back to Oriya, who was glaring at him evenly. 

    "All right," he said, just as evenly. "I'll tell you everything. And then you have to wait here while I go to get us some help." 

~~~~ 

    Hisoka had drifted off to sleep, although he was unsure when, and he jerked awake to the sound of mumbles. He pried his eyes open. The room was dim, but he was able to see. There was moonlight coming in through the window, as the shades were drawn, and a thin strip of light underneath the door. Watari was still working. 

    More mumbles drew his attention to the man lying in the bed next to his. Hisoka realized he had fallen asleep fully dressed, sprawled out across one of the infirmary beds. Tsuzuki had been quiet and withdrawn and not good for much conversation, and Hisoka had been nearing exhaustion. Apparently Tsuzuki had not fared much better. 

    "Tsuzuki . . .?" he got off the bed and padded softly over to Tsuzuki's side. His shoes and jacket had been removed; he presumed that Watari had been responsible for that. "Tsuzuki, wake up . . . you're having a nightmare." He reached out momentarily, then drew his hand back. He didn't want to touch Tsuzuki unless he had to. 

    Tsuzuki jerked in his sleep. "No . . . don't hurt her . . . I'm the one you're . . . after . . ." 

    "Tsuzuki, damn it," Hisoka said sharply. There was no help for it. He reached out and gave Tsuzuki's shoulder a rough shake. The emotions were so strong that he could feel them even through the layers of cloth. 

    _//Pain, fear, and undeniable RAGE – and the world exploded and he could feel his blood burning, power rushing to his head with nowhere to go but out his fingertips and everything was red – and then over – _

    bodies littering the ground around him – 

    "Ruka-chan . . . Ruka-chan, no . . . no . . ." 

    Silence. 

    "I . . . wanted . . . to save you . . ." 

    Tsuzuki lifted his head and screamed. // 

    "NO!" 

    "Tsuzuki – let me go – " 

    Tsuzuki's eyes cracked open and the world faded into view slowly. He realized that he had Hisoka's wrist locked in a death grip. The smaller boy was trembling from the sheer force of Tsuzuki's emotions. 

    "Please," he managed to gasp out. "Please let me go . . ." 

    Tsuzuki withdrew his hand. "Sorry," he whispered. 

    It took Hisoka a few minutes to gather himself after that storm of pain and anger and guilt. "You don't have to be sorry," he finally said. "I just . . . I didn't want to leave you in that nightmare. It looked . . ." He couldn't finish the sentence. There were no words for what he had accidentally seen. 

    "Seventy-two years ago," Tsuzuki said, shaking his head. "Longer, I suppose . . . that was when I was eighteen . . . still seems like yesterday, though . . ." 

    Hisoka nodded; he understood that much. 

    "I'm sorry," Tsuzuki blurted out again. 

    "I told you to not be sorry," Hisoka said sharply. He felt bad for snapping as soon as he saw Tsuzuki cringe away. The motion was so small as to be imperceptible, but Hisoka noticed. "I'm sorry," he said, then laughed as he realized they were apologizing back and forth. "I'm just . . . I guess we're both on edge." 

    Tsuzuki nodded. He sat up in bed, drawing his knees to his chest, and staring down at them. They sat for a few long seconds in silence. 

    "Are you worried?" Hisoka finally asked. 

    "About the whole curse thing?" Tsuzuki replied. "Yeah . . . who wouldn't be? I don't want to be used as a demon battery for the rest of my . . . afterlife, I guess." 

    Hisoka didn't reply for a long minute. He didn't know why, not exactly, but seeing Tsuzuki so quiet and withdrawn disturbed him greatly. He had a mental image of the purple-eyed Shinigami as bright, cheerful, bouncy. But he couldn't say where that image was coming from – certainly Tsuzuki had done nothing to generate it during their short time together. 

    "I think it's going to be all right," he finally ventured. "Watari seems pretty smart, and . . . he said we've gotten out of a lot of scrapes before." 

    "Wish I could remember them," Tsuzuki said, and laughed a little. 

    "I'm not sure we do," Hisoka said thoughtfully. 

    "It's too bad . . ." Tsuzuki let out a soft sigh. "Maybe Watari-san and Tatsumi-san can fix this, but . . . I'm not sure our memories will ever be recovered. Are you?" 

    "No," Hisoka agreed. "But . . . maybe it doesn't matter?" 

    "Maybe it matters less to you," Tsuzuki said. "You've lost three years. I lost over seventy." 

    There seemed to be nothing Hisoka could say to that. 

    "Besides . . ." Tsuzuki looked away. "Maybe in seventy years . . . everything in my life . . . it seems so fresh now, so recent. I don't want that. I want to go back to . . . to having forgotten it all, to not worrying about it anymore. I want to go back to that." 

    Without really thinking about it, Hisoka leaned over and folded Tsuzuki's hand in his own. "You never forget what hurts you," he said softly. "Never." 

    Tsuzuki tugged his hand away. "Are you saying that because of your empathy?" he asked, sounding bitter. 

    "No," Hisoka said simply, "I'm saying it because it's true. You know that as well as I do. I see no point in self-delusion. Whether you get your memory back or not – whether it was seventy years ago or seven hundred – it's still going to hurt as much as it did the day it happened." 

    Tsuzuki turned his face away. "Not much for comfort, are you," he said dully. 

    Hisoka shrugged. "As I said, there's no point in self-delusion." 

    Tsuzuki refused to look at him. "I almost wish I'd stayed with Muraki. Maybe he was a lying murderer, but at least he was nice to me." 

    "I'm sure he would have kept it up for such a long time, too. Probably until he raped and murdered you like he did me." 

    There was a long pause. "Sorry," Tsuzuki whispered. "I – " 

    "Never mind," Hisoka said roughly, wondering what on earth had possessed him to open his mouth in the first place. "Just get some more sleep. You're worn out and so am I. We both need a break. It's not worth worrying about until morning." 

    Tsuzuki agreed wearily. He lay back down and stared at the ceiling, listened to the rustle of sheets as Hisoka climbed back into bed. 

    They lay in silence for a long time, waiting to fall asleep. 

~~~~ 

    Watari rubbed his eyes sleepily. The computer text was blurring in front of his eyes, but after days of futility, he felt like he was finally making progress. He certainly wasn't about to go do anything silly like get some sleep. When he was on a roll, he never stopped. 

    Besides, he found it easiest to work at night, when the building was mostly empty and quiet. No one came to bother him. No one interrupted his work. 

    Of course, no one made coffee, either, and Watari had long ago finished his last cup. 

    He stood up. Yawned, stretched. Decided to go for a little walk to wake himself up. 003 has long ago fallen asleep, nestled in Watari's lab coat. Watari left the owl there and walked the dark hallways of the Meifu, deep in thought. 

    The problem was simple enough. A demon had possessed a human, and needed to be expelled. Similar to other cases they'd taken, like Hijiri's. A single reibaku spell would probably be enough for that, but what then? Once the demon was on its own – after amassing power for over a century – they would have to kill it. Well, Tsuzuki had killed numerous demons, so that wouldn't be a problem, except Watari was unsure of how the spell would react. 

    When the demon was gone, would Tsuzuki be free from the spell? Or would Tsuzuki, now unquestionably bound to the demon, be dragged along with it to oblivion? 

    Would their memories be returned? Or would they be stuck like this forever? 

    Watari pushed both hands through his hair and sighed. 

    "Ah, Watari-san! I'm glad you're here!" Gushoshin Younger floated up beside him. Watari nearly jumped out of his skin. "I thought everyone had left already. We've received an urgent message!" 

    "What is it?" Watari asked, turning to give the Gushoshin his full attention. 

    "It's like this . . ." 

~~~~ 

    Tatsumi was a very precise man. It was apparent even in how he slept, lying on his back with one arm across his chest, the other outstretched so it could more efficiently hit the alarm clock in the morning, which he always did about ten seconds before it would go off. 

    Therefore, it was fortunate for Tatsumi that no one else was there at three thirty-two that morning, when his phone rang. 

    He flopped. And flailed. And finally knocked it off the hook and fell back to sleep. 

    He awoke fully a mere minute later from a strange dream in which someone was shouting at him from an impossible distance. He blinked at the phone, wondering why it was off the hook, and why he could hear a tinny little voice coming from it. "Tatsumi? Tatsumi, are you there, will you wake up already?" 

    Tatsumi grabbed the phone. "Tatsumi desu," he said, hoping he sounded at least partially dignified. 

    "Good, it's Watari. You need to get your ass down here right now." 

    "On my way." Tatsumi did not question. When Watari was in the mood to be serious, it meant that there was definitely something not good going on. 

    He arrived at the office less than twenty minutes later, impeccable as always. Watari was bent over the coffee machine, pouring himself a mug. The blonde gave him one look and snorted. "What, is that suit one piece that you just yank on in the mornings?" he asked. 

    Tatsumi gave him a look, but relaxed slightly. If Watari opened with one of his usual jibes, then things hadn't reached full catastrophe stage yet. "You got me out of bed, I suggest you not question," he said coolly. "Is Tsuzuki-san – " 

    "Tsuzuki's fine," Watari said, handing him a cup of coffee. "And so's Bon. They're still asleep." 

    "Then why am I here?" Tatsumi asked wearily. 

    "Because our dear one-eyed and evil is up to no good as usual." Watari held out the message that the Gushoshin had printed for him. "Four murders in the past six hours, all him. There are witnesses, for crying out loud. He's not being careful." 

    "He wants our attention," Tatsumi said, scanning the report. 

    "Well, he got it," Watari said dryly. "What should we do?" 

    Tatsumi studied the report in more detail, momentarily ignoring Watari's question. He wasn't going to make any decisions without the full facts. "These started occurring less than an hour after I last saw him," he said, each word deliberate and considered. "At which point he was still with Mibu-san." 

    "Who would never have let him go off on a murder spree if he could help it," Watari said slowly, seeing the direction that Tatsumi was going in. "And if Muraki wants our attention . . ." Watari swore softly. "The demon must have gotten Oriya." 

    "My line of thought precisely." Tatsumi folded up the report and put it in his shirt pocket. "Shall we go?" 

    Watari nodded, his face unwontedly serious. They appeared on earth moments later. Due to the amount of effort that Tatsumi put into keeping track of Muraki, they were able to arrive directly on the doorstep of where he was staying. Tatsumi reached up and oh-so-politely knocked on the door. 

    Muraki opened it moments later. He stood back to let them in wordlessly. After they had both come in, he shut the door. "I was expecting you," he said, his voice emotionless. 

    "Gee, just 'cause you committed four murders, you think we're at your beck and call?" Watari's voice was cheerful, but there was an edge of menace beneath it that few people ever heard from the scientist. 

    Muraki gestured sharply to Oriya, who was asleep in one of the beds, curled up with the blankets drawn to his chin. "The demon has Oriya," he said through ground teeth. "I had no better way to get your attention." 

    "Honestly, property damage would have sufficed," Watari said, giving Muraki a look. "It's not like we don't keep track of you and you damn well know it. But we don't have time for small talk or to punish you for the murders." He walked over to Oriya. "You put him to sleep?" 

    Muraki nodded. "I did not particularly want him privy to . . . this evening's events." 

    Watari checked him briefly. He gave Tatsumi a look. Tatsumi was, thus far, leaning against the door silently, letting Watari have the floor. "He'll only have four days," Watari said unhappily. "What do you think we should do?" 

    "How about finding a way to reverse the spell?" Muraki asked, giving them both a cold look. "As in, now?" 

    "Oh, you were so high and mighty, we thought you already knew how to do it," Watari said sweetly. Muraki gave him a death glare, which he returned in kind. "We'll find a way," he finally said. "But it's going to take time. More time than Oriya has. It has to be done delicately, or we risk Tsuzuki's life and soul. However . . ." Watari gave Tatsumi another look, but the secretary was, for whatever reason, letting him handle the negotiations. "Bringing someone to the Meifu apparently puts the spell into a temporary holding position. If we took Oriya there, he'd be safe until we found the solution." 

    "Yes," Muraki said immediately. "Good." 

    Tatsumi started forward. "In Kyoto . . ." he said softly, his tone dangerous, "you came to the Meifu. How?" 

    Muraki gave him an annoyed look, but he knew he had to answer the question. "Tsuzuki-san willingly brought in the girl. I traveled through her." 

    "So if we willingly bring in Mibu-san . . ." Tatsumi let the question trail off. 

    Muraki scoffed. "Of course not. Other than that simple sleep spell, I've never worked any magic on Oriya my whole life. He wouldn't have stood for it. I can't enter through him; I have no hold over him." 

    Tatsumi's eyes narrowed. "I'm not sure I believe you," he said. 

    Watari leaned over and said in a low voice, "Tatsumi . . . he did save Bon's life." 

    "I'm aware of that," Tatsumi said. He surveyed the situation, then nodded slightly. "Watari-san, bring Mibu-san back to the Meifu and make him comfortable. If that doesn't stop the spell because he's not a Shinigami, we'll have to go from there, but I believe it will." 

    "It'll be a day or two before we know, don't forget," Watari said warningly. He looked at Tatsumi, who clearly intended on staying for at least another minute, and scooped Oriya up, draping the unconscious man's arm over his shoulders. He vanished without another word. 

    "Yes?" Muraki said, sounding amused. 

    "I want you to remember something," Tatsumi said coolly. "I agreed to let Watari-san take Mibu-san to the Meifu for one reason – and one reason only. I believe it will be beneficial to him to have an actual human under the curse to figure out how to combat it. That is all." 

    Muraki sneered. "He saved your precious boy Shinigami, though, didn't he?" 

    "That has nothing to do with it." Tatsumi looked at Muraki over the rim of his glasses. "Never forget who and what you're dealing with, when you deal with us. We are Shinigami. To us, death is just part of life, just the next step taken. Mibu-san can live or he can die . . . and it will mean nothing to me." 

    "And?" Muraki asked quietly. 

    Tatsumi smiled, a cold, hard smile. "Not every Shinigami cares about the deaths of innocents, Muraki. Not every Shinigami is Tsuzuki-san. Don't forget that, or both you and Mibu-san won't live through this. And although you seem hell bent on keeping us from realizing it . . . I believe it would trouble you greatly if Mibu-san were to die . . . and you just willingly gave him into our custody." 

    He turned and walked away. 

    Muraki began to wonder if he had miscalculated. 

~~~~ 


	14. Chapter Thirteen

_I... I can't believe I finally finished this chapter... it's been gathering dust for two years and I finally finished it. sob of relief _

_Hopefully y'all remember what was going on. (I didn't.) If not, you can start at the beginning! (Like I had to.) But I wouldn't worry because half the pieces don't add up together anyway. (Because I suck.) It'll have Tsusoka hurt/comfort, angst, and fluff, and that's all we really need, right? (I sure hope so.) _

_The first scene in this chapter had already been posted, but I added material to it, so please re-read it! _

_Bear with me while I beat FFN to death for killing my formatting. Thank you. _

Chapter Thirteen

Hisoka had closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep when Watari came in to check on them; he didn't want the bubbly scientist realizing that he wasn't sleeping. He knew that Watari would be concerned, but Hisoka doubted anything could make him sleep while he was so anxious.

He sat up and let out a little sigh. His mind felt almost disturbingly blank, now that the buzzing voice had been removed from it. He glanced over at Tsuzuki and wondered if he was dreaming again. The demon – if that was what it was – had chosen him over Hisoka. Hisoka had been an afterthought, a mistake.

As usual.

He stared at Tsuzuki's sleeping face and was glad to see that it was calm, even tranquil, in his sleep.

Hisoka strained to remember something from the past two years. Something, anything, even the slightest hint. He was starting to realize that he knew more than Tsuzuki did. It made sense, given that the spell had so much of a stronger hold on Tsuzuki.

It wasn't so much that he remembered things as that he knew them to be so. Like the impression he had of Tsuzuki as someone who was warm, cheerful, caring, kind. Not this traumatized shell of a man with so much pain and fear and guilt. Everything about Tsuzuki was ALL WRONG as far as Hisoka was concerned.

But there were other things, too. He felt that he was better able to anticipate Tatsumi and Watari than Tsuzuki was. More adaptable to the situation.

For the first time since everything had happened, Hisoka took some deep breaths. Deliberately calmed himself. There were other factors. Tsuzuki seemed to know nothing of any powers that he might have learned in his seventy years of being a Shinigami. But Hisoka did. His empathy had been trained, and he could use it properly, whereas in his life he had held no control over it at all.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and walked softly over to Tsuzuki. The bond the demon used thrived on fear, pain, control. Hisoka could feel it. Could use it?

He put his hand on Tsuzuki's forehead and closed his eyes.

The dream he was having was sweet.

Hisoka was looking at himself.

_/ He leaned over the bed, looking at the boy flopped down on it. His garish orange shirt clashed horribly with his blue jeans and light brown hair, which was in his face. "He can be cute when he keeps his mouth shut," Tsuzuki mused. _

"_A Shinigami at the age of sixteen . . . it's kind of sad, isn't it." _

_He reached out and smoothed the hair out of the boy's face. "I'm sure he's got his reasons . . ." / _

Hisoka lifted his hand from Tsuzuki's forehead and stared down at the other man. That had been a memory, not a dream. Clear, detailed, perfect. Their memories were still intact, were still inside them somewhere. That meant there was a way to recover them somehow.

And if there were more memories like that . . . Hisoka thought he might almost want them back. He looked down at the man in front of him and his heart ached. He reached out and brushed the hair out of Tsuzuki's face, just as Tsuzuki had done to him in the dream.

He tried again.

It took some sorting out – some concentration to avoid being taken back into the dream. It was difficult, because he wanted to be back in the dream – wanted to be back in that warm, comfortable place, where Tsuzuki knew him, cared about him.

He found it easily enough, though. The demon's aura was very distinct, tainted by hatred and strong greed. And an undertone. Fear and desperation, a cloying, suffocating need to get OUT.

Hisoka didn't know what he was sensing, but he wasn't sure it mattered. He could report it to Watari later; surely the scientist would have some way of figuring it out. He followed that link . . . and ran headlong into the barrier between Chijou and the Meifu.

His mind spun wildly out of control.

_/ This just doesn't make any sense, how can she say something like that when she -- / _

_/ Okay, if I try adding the cream after I've mixed everything else, it might – /  
/ what a pest, he always needs me to /_

"Hisoka? Hisoka!"

firm hands grabbed him by the wrists

_/ "I don't want to be alone anymore! Where I belong . . . is by your side! I need you!" / _

"Hisoka?"

Hisoka opened his eyes. His chest heaved for breath and the image of the man in front of him swum. He couldn't see clearly – half in, half out of his body, half in everyone else's, his mind awash with the thoughts of half the people in the Meifu, Shinigami and spirits alike.

Desperate only for some grounding, some silence, he acted without thinking. He threw his arms around Tsuzuki's neck and clung to him, shaking.

"It's okay," Tsuzuki said, holding him tightly. Rubbing his back. Old, familiar things that Hisoka couldn't remember ever having happened before. "It's all right. Shhh, it's okay, it's okay."

Hisoka's shivering eased. He relaxed into Tsuzuki's arms.

"What did you see?" Tsuzuki asked quietly.

Hisoka shook his head. "I can't," he whispered, trying to push back those images of black fire, that dull, dead hopelessness he had felt from Tsuzuki, the stark terror he had felt himself. "I can't."

Tsuzuki hesitated. "Hisoka, I – "

The door opened. Watari blinked at them. "I thought you two were sleeping," he said.

"We were," Tsuzuki said. "At least, I was."

Hisoka was blinking at the man slung over Watari's shoulder. "Uhm . . . why is Mibu-san with you?" he asked. "Wasn't he, well, alive four hours ago?"

"Yes," Watari said, letting Oriya down onto one of the beds. "In fact, he still is. He's been cursed, though. I figured that if being in the Meifu halts the spell, we can keep him safe here until we figure out some way to break it. We owe it to him after he saved you, even though Tatsumi didn't like it."

Hisoka nodded a little. Frowned. "May I?" he asked, his hand hovering over Oriya for a moment.

Watari blinked at him. "Sure," he finally said.

Hisoka closed his eyes and rested his hand on Oriya's forehead. The bond with the demon was just as blatant. He frowned, biting his lip.

"What is it?" Watari asked him.

"I could ask you the same thing," Hisoka said, giving Watari one of his best sullen glares. "You know way more about all this than you're letting on. You know what's happening to Tsuzuki and you know what we're up against. Why won't you tell us?"

"Saa . . ." Watari ruefully rubbed his hand over his hair. "You got me, Bon. I didn't tell you because I didn't want to scare either of you."

"It's a little late," Hisoka snapped.

Watari lifted his hands in surrender. "What we're fighting is a demon that has possessed a human," he said. "He's extended the human's life, forcing demonic immortality on it, using that to hide from the rest of the Makai. Getting the human exorcised isn't a problem – there's more than one Shinigami that can do that spell, the two of you included. It's what to do afterwards that's the problem."

Hisoka nodded, thinking this over. That explained the desperation, the feeling of being trapped – he had been sensing the human's emotions.

"What do you mean?" Tsuzuki asked.

"I mean, that once the demon's exorcised, we have to kill it," Watari said patiently. "That won't be easy – particularly since we don't know how that will affect you."

Tsuzuki's face fell.

"Look," Watari said. "I know this is hard on you. It's hard on us too, believe me. But we can fix this," he said earnestly. "We've gotten out of worse. We can fix this, even if we can't reverse the damage and recover your memories. We – "

"They're still there," Hisoka interjected.

" – can – what?" Watari stopped mid-sentence and blinked at him.

"Our memories," Hisoka said. "They're still here. He was dreaming them." He gestured to Tsuzuki.

Tsuzuki looked bewildered. Watari, on the other hand, got excited. "What happened? Tell me everything."

Hisoka detailed what had happened, from the vague suspicions he had had, to the dream he had witnessed, to the attempt to follow the bond back to the demon. "And what Tsuzuki touched me while I was out of control, I saw – " His voice broke, and he shook his head.

"Tell me what you saw," Watari urged.

"I saw black flame," Hisoka whispered. "Everything was burning, and – and I was so scared."

"You saw what happened in Kyoto," Watari said, looking surprised. "Well, that would make sense. It's a powerful memory, probably for the both of you. Hm . . . this is all interesting, very interesting . . ." He began to pace up and down the room. "Bon," he finally said, "do you think you could tell if Mibu-san still had his memories?"

Hisoka blinked at this request. "I . . . I could try, I guess," he said. "But if he's not dreaming, I don't know if I'll be able to get anything from him."

"Well, just give it a whirl," Watari said.

Hisoka nodded slightly and reached out, placing his hand on top of Oriya's. His eyes were closed for a few long minutes. When they opened again, he looked pensive. "I don't get much of anything from him," he said. "Some vague dreamy feelings. Certainly nothing like a memory, though."

"Okay." Watari frowned slightly.

"What's that mean?" Tsuzuki asked, not about to let the blonde scientist slink away without answering things.

"No clue!" Watari said cheerfully.

Hisoka was still studying Oriya with an intent expression. "It doesn't really feel dreamlike, though," he murmured, almost to himself. "It's more like . . . the way you were, Tsuzuki, before you woke up. All . . . lost in that darkness . . ."

"What are you talking about?" Watari asked, giving Hisoka a curious look.

Hisoka was only looking at Tsuzuki. "Was it dark there?" he asked.

"Yes," Tsuzuki said softly. "Very dark. I wasn't aware of much. I could feel . . . the demon, on the edge of my senses. But mostly it was just that silent darkness, like I was in some sort of prison. And then I heard your voice . . . I saw light."

"Ne, what are you talking about?" Watari asked again, but Tsuzuki and Hisoka ignored him. Watari saw the look they were giving each other, a strangely intent, concentrated look. He decided to shut up for a while.

"Then you woke up," Hisoka said.

"Yes," Tsuzuki said. "I did. You . . . showed me the way back to myself. Again."

Hisoka frowned slightly. "Again?"

Tsuzuki blinked, bewildered. "I . . . I don't know why I said that," he admitted. "But it was familiar. Like it wasn't the first time that you had saved me."

Watari felt suddenly uncomfortable in the room, although he was fairly sure that the other two Shinigami had totally forgotten about his presence. However, since they had fallen silent, he decided to remind them. He cleared his throat. Tsuzuki jumped and Hisoka blushed. "What are you talking about?" Watari asked again.

"Before Tsuzuki woke up, while we thought he was still cursed," Hisoka said, "I . . . had fallen asleep. I was calling to him, I think . . . and then he woke up."

"Oh." Watari blinked. "How?"

Hisoka shook his head. "I don't know."

There was a long silence.

"Well," Watari finally declared, "you two should probably get some more sleep."

They blinked at him.

"You're kidding, right?" Tsuzuki finally asked.

"Like we're going to be able to sleep?" Hisoka added.

Watari sighed. "Okay, fine. Stay up with Mibu-san for a while, let me know if his condition changes. I'm going to go talk to Tatsumi and see what he's got up his sleeve besides his shadows."

He turned and left the room, leaving Tsuzuki and Hisoka blinking at each other. A moment passed.

Then Tsuzuki smiled wearily. "Sounds like our memories weren't all bad."

"I guess they weren't," Hisoka said.

Watari tapped his pencil against the edge of his desk as he pondered the conundrum that was laid out in front of him. It was becoming plain that he could not use any past examples to deal with this. The spell was reacting in a totally different manner with the Shinigami than it did with humans.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The first obvious difference was the change in memory. The spell had short-circuited on that first step and from there everything had gone haywire. The difference between life and death had mucked something up. Tsuzuki and Hisoka had lost their memories, but if one were to listen to Hisoka, those memories weren't lost; merely somehow contained. Their behavior backed that up, as far as Watari could tell. Although they had no specific memories, they still acted as if they had known each other.

This was true more of Hisoka than of Tsuzuki, but that also made sense to Watari. Clearly, the spell had not taken effect on Hisoka anywhere near as strongly. Watari assumed that from what the demon had said, it had chosen to not pursue the spell on Hisoka after the first step.

Tap. Tap.

From what Hisoka said, Oriya's memories were well and truly lost. The souls coming to the Meifu had not had their memories either, so this also calculated properly. Oriya was a normal human and thus the spell would follow its normal course.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Coming to the Meifu had arrested the spell, but other than that, it would follow its normal course.

Tap.

Watari frowned to himself. He was hung up on that phrase. Follow its normal course.

Tap. Tap.

Follow its –

"Watari-san?" Tatsumi poked his head through the doorway, and Watari's hands jerked, spilling pencils and pens all over the table. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to – " His sentence stopped before it finished. "What's wrong?"

Watari turned to Tatsumi, his face paler than usual. "I'm not sure," he said. "But I think we may have made a big mistake."

Muraki found the demon at the playground again.

"I was waiting for you," it said with a slithery, crawly laugh, and stood up from the swing.

It was Oriya.

Muraki gave the demon a cool stare. "Please relinquish that guise," he said, and the demon laughed again.

"You don't like me looking like your friend?" it asked, smiling pleasantly. "Oh, but I like this form. Much, much better than the little girl. I took that form to escape suspicion from the Makai for a while. It's nice to finally be back in a form I appreciate. Good, strong muscles on this one."

"Oriya is in the Meifu. You cannot touch him."

The demon laughed again. "I get the guise when I first touch their mind, if I choose," it said. "I meant to take the Shinigami's form, but that spell went so haywire that I didn't want to try to do anything complicated with it."

Muraki half-turned as the demon stood, watching it as it walked around the playground. "You will release Oriya," he stated. It did not sound like a suggestion.

"Hm. I don't believe I will," the demon drawled. "Are you going to make me?"

"Yes," Muraki said. "If you don't release Oriya, I will exorcise and kill you."

"All right," the demon said agreeably. "But you do realize that if you do that, the Shinigami will also die."

Muraki gave the demon a long, considering look. "I don't believe you."

"As you like," it said with a shrug. "That doesn't make it any less true. Kill me, and the Shinigami will die. Let me live, and your friend will die. It's as simple as that. You have four days to decide."

Muraki said nothing.

"Oh, I'm sorry," the demon said. "You actually believed that crock about how going to the Meifu halts the spell? I'm afraid to say it isn't so; at least, not for a human. After all, your friend's soul can't go to the Meifu right now, because I still have it. And the spirituality of the Meifu has no effect on a living body. While I'll admit that the effects of the spell would be halted on a Shinigami by a transfer to the Meifu, that certainly wouldn't apply to your friend."

"You're lying," Muraki said.

"Am I?" the demon smiled, a painfully familiar expression on Oriya's face.

Muraki had the demon pinned against the ground moments later, his hand around its throat. "Release Oriya," he said.

The demon smiled, even as Muraki's hands tightened on its throat. "Do you dream about doing this to him?"

"Release him now," Muraki snarled.

"No." The demon made a sharp gesture with one hand and Muraki was thrown backwards. He regained his footing easily and gave the demon a wary look. "I've given you the terms," the demon said. "You have four days, and any damage the spell causes to your friend in that time cannot be undone. You had best do some thinking, then, on who is more important to you."


End file.
